Power supply...

[zandor]

500W is a "bit" of overkill for what sounds like a pretty normal desktop. $50 is about right for a normal machine if you get a decent brand though. It's far more important to get a quality PSU than one with a high wattage rating most of the time.

If you actually need 500+ watts, you're probably talking about some sort of expensive monster machine (dual cpus, 8800, sli, etc.), in which case you should be looking for the best PSU around to protect your $3000+ beast.

I don't really have any experience with Rosewill. The brands I see most often recommended seem to be Seasonic, Enermax, Antec, Fortron (FSP Group), and PC Power & Cooling (expensive... these are mostly for dual proc/SLI boxes & servers).

For non-monster applications I tend to like Enermax Noistakers. They're solid units, and I like the adjustable fan. Most PSUs move a lot more air than they need to to keep themselves cool since they're designed under the assumption the PSU fan will be doing much of the work of cooling the system. I've always got several other fans in the case, so there's no need for the PSU to move a lot of air and make a lot of noise. They are a bit more pricey though, $80 or so.

For budget builds I'd normally just install a $40-50 Fortron. I've only had a problem with one once, and that was an "ID-ten-T" problem. They like to put a switch on the back of the PSU, which can be confusing for some people.

My personal workstation runs off a PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 550W. I'm a programmer though, and it's a full blown workstation machine. Dual Opterons, 4 SCSI HDs, etc. Plus I tossed in a 7900GTX so it doubles as my gaming machine. Of course, if I didn't program on it for a living I really doubt I'd have those dual procs. I'm pretty impressed with the thing. Despite handling a much bigger load than my other machine and running at a higher % of its maximum capacity it kept the machine up through power problems that crashed my other box & made my lights and monitors flicker. I've since invested in a UPS for each system. At $200 I wouldn't recommend it unless you're building a "monster" machine though.