From: Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
At what point did 600W power supplies become budget level power supplies?
My guess is that there are a few forces: - the only people who buy power supplies are enthusiasts or gamers. Others just buy ready-built PCs. - Gamers are sure they need a lot of power for their video cards. Unfortunately, it isn't easy to tell how much, so over-specing is the easiest approach. - people think that a larger PS is more reliable since it isn't likely to be overloaded. - a larger power supply is more likely to accomodate future additions to your system. - people seem to perceive the value of a PS to be proportional to the power but the cost to manufacture isn't. So manufacturers like selling larger ones.