PSU and 80 Plus Options

[Shub0xx]

Everywhere I look these days, it seems that more and more PSU's are certified 80 Plus. Does this mean it's more reliable than those not rated, or is there something I missed when reading websites?

[Shub0xx]

Cool. My current psu is an apower platinum 1200W (I'm on a carer pension, so spare cash doesn't come around all that often). But now I'm looking at being more conservative and only getting half of wot I had. I just hope 600W will b enuf for an i5/i7 when I finally upgrade.

[R4N]

Cool. My current psu is an apower platinum 1200W (I'm on a carer pension, so spare cash doesn't come around all that often). But now I'm looking at being more conservative and only getting half of wot I had. I just hope 600W will b enuf for an i5/i7 when I finally upgrade.

if that apower is actually capable of more than 350-400w I will eat my hat.

Depending on the machine you want, get an 80+ certified 550-650w psu and you will be able to run almost anything on the market (excluding a GTX480 which needs a small nuclear power plant)