I'm not sure how my friend does it, but he runs a tiny Shuttle (name brand) system with an ATI X800 Video Card & AthlonXP @ 2.3GHz + 2x 80GB HDDs, about 3x 80mm fans and a cold cathode light. Fitting it into his tiny shuttle case was one heck of a dremel job, and boy does his PSU exhaust hot air. The sound of his machine powering up & running dwarfs the sound of my huge dual CPU rig...

But of course I have the heavy hitting processing power. Dual AthlonMP Bartons @ 2.43GHz. And a heavy PSU (Vantec Stealth 520...$120 IIRC) to feed them.


Anyways, I would keep away from PowMax.


The 550 watt PSU that comes in the blinged out Diablo case isn't considered great either when under a lot of load, but with a low-power system (such as a basic non-overclocked P4 system) you shouldn't stress it too much to cause problems.

When a cheap supply is under load, heat builds up and components malfunction. It might not produce voltages anywhere close to 12v on the 12v rail (ie spike to 14-17 volts if there is no good over-voltage protetion), and the DC Ripple/Noise can get crazy to the point where in 1 second the voltage can create spikes/valleys that might average out to 12v, but the damage would be done.


Anyways, good luck on the search for a decent PSU