It seems OCZ likes PC Power and Cooling too:http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39879PC P&C is another industrial PS manufacture (like Silverstone). The only real drawback is that these industrial guys don't care about noise. Don't forget to check the decibel ratings. I have a 560 watt Silverstone and I couldn't stand it anymore. I finally hacked into the dang thing and installed a variable speed fan. Will 510 watts be enough? Likely, but if you are looking to use that new ATI (AMD) X2900 Vcard, it might get close. Those things need 250 watts, each. Forget about an SLI'd / Crossfire'd setup with a 500 watt PS! Even Nvidia's 8800 series need 150 watts+, each. If we can just get through this 'hump' of Vcards that need 250 watts, we'll be fine. The 'next-gen' (of everything) will be "shrinks." This means the size of the components and interconnects on these next-gen chips will be getting smaller. How much smaller? We are currently at 65 to 90 nanometer circuit sizes. Intel's next-gen CPU (Penryn) will be a shrink of the C2D to 45 nanometer circuit sizes. The major advantage to using 45 nanometer circuitry (5 nanometers is the width of an atom) is to lower power requirements. The Penryn will be no big deal. It will (mainly) just use less power. Holding onto a mid powered PS to match up with a chip that will need less power sounds like a Very informed plan to me! In 2-3 years, the need for huge PSs will be a thing of the past. This is where we're going . . . but we gotta get through 'now' first.

My 1000 Watt Enermax has a 139mm fan ,not noisy. The case fans make more noise. This machine falls somewhere in the middle of all the machines I've had noisewhy's.One thing I noticed is the stability is great, never seems to want to CTD. Tried some nutty stuff like maxing EVERYTHING out with FSX on Vista-64, with and without SP1.The only problem was an OOM error, with 4GB? I got 18 FPS in NY and the sim was smooth as silk until the OOM error half way to KLAX. Waiting for PMDG-Level-D. After leaving NY area frames went to 65-70 FPS.My mobo has 2 AMD 1207L sockets. I guess the L stands for "Land grid array", no CPU pins. The new up-coming AMD Agena Quad core CPU's will be a drop in replacement. Will just need a BIOS update. This is the primary reason for building this machine. Only time will tell if I made a wise move?I can tell you that all 4 cores run at close to 100% with FSX/SP1.Does 4 Seti W Units at the same time and will run FS9 with PMDG's 747 While crunching Seti, no hesitations, stutters, or any other problems.That sort of surprised me.You will never notice too much PSU, not enough?

>PC P&C is another industrial PS manufacture (like>Silverstone). The only real drawback is that these industrial>guys don't care about noise. Don't forget to check the decibel>ratings. I have a 560 watt Silverstone and I couldn't stand it>anymore. I finally hacked into the dang thing and installed a>variable speed fan. >I don't care about noise at all. :) You should have heard my OLD PC Power p/s. It was a Turbo-Cool 300watter from about 1997. It sounded like a Cessna.Raptors, big p/s fans, stuff today is QUIET by comparison to all of that.PC Power did/does have a quiet line of models. They're pretty quiet...RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

>Not a nickel less than $150 for a 600W+ PSU?>>That seems a tad excessive. It's actually hard to find a 600W>PSU that sells (after discounts and mail in rebates) for>$150.>>I buy into each of the other specs, no doubt about it (with a>faint touch of reservation on the GPU), but the PSU price spec>is hard to understand. That said, I agree that something south>of $75 is foolhardy in the demanding environment of which we>speak, but there are numerous PSU's going in the $100+ range>that seem quite sufficient.>>Can you elaborate, Sam, on the relatively high bar that you've>set for a PSU price?>>-Seadog If you're going to build a new system then you might as well get a top of the line PS which many people tend to overlook when building. Just got a new case for my new system and the PS is next. I've pretty much narrowed it down to a CORSAIR CMPSU-620HX ATX12V v2.2 2.91 620W which can be had from between 135 and 170 depending on where you purchase. Nothing but glowing reviews. Craig

Can someone helpI had a custom built machine for flight simulator X and have low performance issues, low fps, no matter what setting i do in nvidia or fsx.my motherboard is striker extremeIntel core 2 duo, 2.4 GhzHard drive 500GB2 gig of memory OCZ PC2-8500 SLI Ready 1066 MHZ DDR2 Memory8800 GTX graphics card 768 MegI get a lot of warning on pc probe for voltage on NB COre, SB Core, 1.2V HT, OPT 1 through Opt 5 rpm, etc.I went into nvidia and did tune system, did not helpI set the timing for memory in Bios and Sli enabled to OC Max and memory of 2.1V, rest is all on Auto, still did not resolve issue.anyone knows what settings are best for striker extreme in either bios or in PC Probe adjustments. If I want to get the best performance out of this machine for FSX, what would you recommend.I tried to overclock, but was not working properly, will revert back to default.Any documentary on this at all anywhere?Thank you so much

The voltage problems are the power supply. Get the builder to replace it. And while it's there, have him re-set the machine to all non-tweaked defaults, then run FSX. With everything at default values, - no tweaking at all - that box will run FSX just fine. If it doesn't, there's something wrong with the initial build's setup or hardware. Ask the builder if he might fix it for you!

I just add 1 comment to the excellant reply by Sam. There is a hugedifference between the data transfer rates of interface and thedisk data read, so now we have disk with burst cache. Ie they nowhave SATA disks with large memory chips known as burst cache. Theidea is that this can pre-load data slowely from disk, and sendit very fast when required using the high speed SATA transfer rates.Now, the problem is, can the disk ever know what file to load intocache before it is asked for and so use the burst cache withoutprefetch instructions. One could theorise that opening a file sometime before actually reading it represents a pre-fetch instruction.I do get much quicker load times for FS9 and IL2 than suggested valueson forums suggest with my 2 SATA disks.I missed this, but it may have been mentioned. Apart from it is mucheasier to fit the SATA cable, it does not restict air flow in the casing. This is a good thing when we need to get the hot air outas quick as possible, and the knot of ribbons of PATA is so difficultto pack away.Tom