notice a general misconception in PSU power rating selection.

the selected PSU should always have a 25% ~ 30% buffer / head room (extra power!).
Running a PSU close to it's rated max power will certainly shorten the life of the PSU. the wording "Max" power output is there for a reason, running it at the rated max is pushing the PSU to its borderline, and shall in turn degrade the caps and transformer quicker than it should.
not to forget, when running applications / games at full load, it will draw additional % of power compared to the required power when the system is sitting idle.

i was manage to degrade (read: spoiled) a thermaltake 430w purepower with s754+A64, 3 hdd (2 pata, 1 sata), 2 dvd burners, and various USB devices..
it still works, but one of the burner would refuse to power up properly with all these in. HDD may have abnormally long detection time during BIOS POST too.

my advice is to do power rating calculations with online power consumption calculators, and decide the necessary power rating from there..

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Added on June 11, 2007, 1:00 amhttp://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

here's quite a good one to start with.
dun be surprise if the resulting power requirements make yr jaw drop..

This post has been edited by weeluvmal: Jun 11 2007, 01:05 AM