What to do with old power supplies?

What are some reliable brands for computer power supplies?

• Also, should what sort of levels should I be looking for in a supply (350, 400, 500, etc)? After I installed a new video card my computer began freezing during bootup whenever I turned it on (but not if I restarted it once it was running). After a bit of research (and a lot of procrastination) I think the problem is the power supply. My current supply is 300w and it looks like, with the new card, my computer's max draw is over that (I've estimated it at around 308W, but I haven't been able to find specific numbers for specific parts and have had to use the next best numbers I could find). Having never thought about power supplies before, I have no idea which brands are accurate and reliable. I have heard stories (which may or may not be true) that some companies promise more than their products can deliver (500w on the unit but with a real performance of 250w). What are some good (and preferably cheap) brands and models? Thank you kindly for any help you can give.

• Answer:

  You'll need 15-30 watts for each hard drive, 15 watts per gig of Ram, 50-100 watts for the motherboard, about 100-125 for that particular graphics cars, 80-125 watts for the X2 cpu, 20--30 watts for any optical drives, 3 watts for each case fan, and about 10 watts for any pci card like sound or wirelss adaptors. To be safe take the upper limits of each. With your graphics card i would recommend a PSU with dual 12v rails. And known makes are makes such as enermax,hiper,antec and many more. Find a PSU that will do the trick, and then google it to find some reviews on it. That way you'll find out if the PSU is a reliable supply unit that will supply what you need. I dunno if your from america, but if you are i'd direct you to newegg.com. Theres a couple of 5 star rated rosewill PSU's that should do the trick, and both are around $40.