What are some good quality PSU's?

[Mini-Me]

Hi.

The "Entry-level" PSU's being such dirty bits of kit, I am wanting to know some good brand-name PSU's that others here might recommend.

I currently tend to opt for Thermaltake brand, but I am now looking at re-building my server(again!), and want to know if anyone has heard of or uses Silverstone PSU's - Any good?

What I need to be able to do, is power a very basic Celeron 850MHz machine running a text-mode Linux fileserver(no GUI and no power-hungry graphics card or anything), but the key is that it needs to power up to eight 500GB hard-drives - currently 5, but room for another 3 as the server expands it's storage. Eight is "Maxed out" - once I have 8, no more will be added, unless I re-build again and add ANOTHER IDE card! :D

So at the moment, I need a PSU which can handle up to 8 drives all at once, and was looking at the Silverstone ST50F 500W one, but am also eyeing up the Silverstone ST56F "Strider" PSU(560W), and lastly the Silverstone OP700 "Olympia" PSU.(700W)

All the drives are IDE, none are SATA, so I am planning to use 2x power splitters to give me the two extra power plugs I need, as all of the above models only provide 6 IDE power plugs.

Thoughts?
Opinions?

[Lostatsea3]

Silverstone Olympia is a great P/S. I use one and love it. I'd stick with that....

[Mini-Me]

Cheers for that info.
Anyone else got any comments to add?

[jlreich]

Silverstone is good and one of the high end manufacturers, but not the only one on the planet. PC Power & Cooling, Seasonic, and Tagen are top notch, and have the price tag to go with them. Thermaltake is a kind of standard for me when looking a for a mid-range standard PSU that's easy on the budget.

Others I would consider are Zalman, Corsair, Hyper, to name a few. These are relatively new to the PSU scene, but either they have been around long enough to establish a good name, or in the case of Zalman they already have a great reputation.

I used to like Antec PSU's, but their failure rate has been so high over the last couple of years that I tend to stay away from them.

Edit -Just read you first post in it's entirety. LOL. For the server with so many drives on it I would go with a PSU with 1 large +12v rail instead of one with several. The 1 +12v will be able to push more amps through during power up where you might have more problems with one with several rails.

PC Power & Cooling definitely comes to mind. All their PSU's have one rail. And you could probably go with a 400W and have no issues. Their PSU's are rated at 100% continuous, so 400W is 400W and not just peak like most others rate theirs. If you wanted to go with 500-600 just to leave you plenty of room to add another 10 drives that would be fine. But I don't see any reason to to go 750W. It isn't like you are running 1500RPM SCSI drives or anything.

Silverstone also has many with a single rail, so they would be another good choice.

[Mini-Me]

Thanks for that jlreich - good info.
Seems like Silverstone is the one for me then.

There is a limited number of power supplies on offer from my source, but I will look around some more, but now I know some brands to look for - thanks to both of you. :)