SPCR

The X1050 got such a glowing review here it's quite tempting even though it is more power than needed, and is only gold rather than platinum rated. Is there any reason to believe the 860 should be worse in any regard? Anandtech reported it had some electrical noise, though they still described it as the best PSU they've ever seen http://www.anandtech.com/print/5464.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

I'll bite - why do you need an 850W PSU?

Hi, I think electrical noise is partly luck of the draw. In general having better quality PSU will reduce the chance, but not eliminate the possibility it will do it under certain circumstances.
I would suggest your chances of electronic whine are similar between any high end Seasonic PSU

Unless you're going to be using *A LOT* of watts through your PC all the time the difference in efficiency isn't going to be significant on your electric bill. Nor will it affect noise levels, by time pulling enough watts to make a difference to PSU cooling everything else will be rather louder!

Enermax do a 500w Platinum PSU and 600w (and higher) versions with bigger selection of connectors, it would run almost any PC.
[My [email protected] + GTX560 Ti can be run from S12-II 330w PSU!]

Regards, Seb

Well the new X1050 seems to be quieter than any of the old lower wattage X range. The fans off until about 400W so you can think of it as a fanless 400W PSU that isn't going to cause problems should demand occasionally go above that point. I do have 8 hard disks, a separate RAID card, and in the past I had a dual GPU graphics card though at present I'm on a lower wattage single GPU one. I've had two Zalman PSUs fail in a row, I'd rather err on the side of caution with wattages.

with 8 HDD's, most good PSU's on the list will be silent.