Buying a powerful Power Supply

Since the PSU's or the Power Supply Units supply power to all of the components of the computer. It is extremely essential that one buys a PSU that provides enough power so as to provide enough power to the components that they do not slow down because of lack of power.
But buying a huge power supply does not mean buying a 2000 Watt SMPS. Doing that will take your electricity bill up to twice the normal. You need to buy a power supply that has a good amount of power while not having an excess of it.
Well, for starters you can be safe with a power supply of 300 Watts to the motherboard, a 20 Watt supply per drive, and a 20 Watt supply per 1 GB of RAM. That all works if you have a really low-end graphics card that doesn't require any more than 150 Watts to run and does not require any special connector to be powered.

• But in case your system has a high-end GPU, you'll have to add the required power of the GPU to  the above wattage and then buy the PSU. Also don't forget to check if the GPU requires an extra cable for power. If yes, add it to the required specifications for the PSU.
• Next, look for a power supply unit having a good amount of connectors of all types i.e. SATA, molex and PCI-E. Its always beneficial to buy one that has one or two connectors of SATA and molex for future expansions.
• And obviously, the PSU you are buying should have a large 60 mm fan, if not 120 mm one for excellent cooling performance for your system. My recommendation: Buy one with 120 mm fan even if it costs an additional $10.

Graphic Cards: model numbers

Writing this post in response to the guy who called me up yesterday night inquiring about two graphic cards (GPU's) and among the two is better. The GPU has specifications that need to be compared to decide which among the available ones is the best. However, there is a short-cut that can roughly point you to the right card. This post explains about that short-cut. As you might already know, there are 2 big players in the GPU market, nVidia and ATI. Let me start with the help of an example from both.
Firstly let us pick a GPU, let's say nVidia GeForce GTX 580. The model number 580 has three digits:

• 5 - It represents the family of the GPU. The higher the number, the latest technology it uses and that it can support.
• 8 - It represents the performance of the card. The higher the number, the better and faster it can compute.
• 0 - It represents trade-off between graphics quality and performance speed. The higher the number, the higher the clock speed but lesser quality.

Now let us pick an ATI Radeon HD 6870 GPU. The model number 6870 has four digits out of which the last digit is insignificant:

• 6 - Same as in nVidia, it represents the family of the GPU. The higher the number, the latest technology it uses and that it can support.
• 8 - It represents the performance of the card. The higher the number, the better and faster it can compute.
• 7 - It represents the stability and reliability of the card. The higher the number, more stable it is.

Obviously, the lowest model number would cost the least. But, since we do not want outdated technology, it is necessary to buy the right Graphic Card out of our available budget. Choose a higher performance graphic card if you want to play the latest games flawlessly, but choose a newer graphic card if you want to extend the life of your PC. Sometimes, u might face a dilemma when you go GPU-shopping. For example, you might find the price of nVidia Geforce GTX 480 and GTX 550 almost similar. The choice is yours, but remember the points mentioned above and you will add a gem to your system.