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When building my latest rig, I went for low power use. I had considered replacing the now 5 year old 300W Enermax supply with something more efficient, but I'm now glad that I did not. The cost benefit to going with an 80-Plus certified unit simply would not have been there with the dual core Atom based board I am using now. At full steam including the LCD monitor, it doesn't even break 90W of consumption on the Kill-a-watt, whereas the old AthlonXP that it replaced idled at about 125W and peaked around 200.
I know that my monitor draws about 15W on it's own, so 75W of consumption from a system that normally draws at least 65W out of the most efficient configuration is not bad since it's only on when I actually use it. So at best, a super-efficient PSU might save me 5W.
I would certainly demand over 80% efficiency out of any future supply that I buy, but older lower power supplies really aren't bad enough to warrant the upgrade when you start counting the pennies to do it.
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