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.