[grogi]

bGears b-Tarantula 650W Modular Power Supply Review
"Since last CES, we've been wondering about the many Power Supplies as well as other goodies bGears were working on. They've been busy and are rumored to be working on another winning audio card. While we don't know any specifics, but knowing bGears, it should be something as Vista friendly as the b-Enspirer is to Windows XP Pro. The crazy thing about almost any audio card is that there are far more issues with Vista than anything I can recall since Windows Millennium. Fortunately, there haven't been any issues that a good reinstall of the drivers hasn't been able to fix.

Alas, we'll wait patiently for any updates. Until then, we've got their b-Tarantula 650 Watt Power Supply. Why only 650 Watts you ask? The honest answer won't make any friends among the 1000 Watt manufacturers. Users who have a single 8800 GTS graphics card, maybe four hard drives, a few fans, a Quad Core processor, and top of the line motherboard sporting 2 or 4GB of memory will realistically consume about 500 Watts. This has been put to the test on more than one occasion specifically for LAN Parties that have a 550 Watt Power Supply limit.

Today, 650 Watts is still quite enough even for a serious gamer with similar components fragging up a server. All too often, we see an over powered, unnecessary PSU added to a system configuration that does nothing but take up extra space and spruce up your system's resume. Excessive wattage doesn't guarantee any greater system performance for the average system. And unless you have enough components to warrant the PSU when overclocking your system, you are wasting your money. This is unless you intend on adding future components that will require something close. If your PSU doesn't have the PFC (Power Factor Correction) feature, you also just might be wasting a lot of power."