What would be a good psu to get for the system I am building?

These are my components.

ECS Black Series GF8200A motherboard.
AMD Phenom II X3 710 cpu
4 sticks of 512mb corsair ram 667mhz
DVD cd writer combo
DVD dvd/rw combo
7200rpm 500 gig hard drive
Geforce gts 250 512mb video card

I have a 500 watt psu from my old pc but I feel I'm definitely going to need more power. Any suggestions?

 

If you're wanting to upgrade it later (maybe a second graphics card in SLI), I would suggest 850W.

You can also try this; http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

 

500w should work fine. if you able to turn it on, it on.

 

He's going to need at least 650W as a safety margin.

@Superfreak: have a look here for PSU info, as the PSU is one of the most critical components in a system:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=208143

 

If you have a quality 500W PSU then you will be fine. I'm running a quad with 4GB RAM and a pair of OC'd 9800GT's with an Antec Earthwatts 500 running 24/7 for over a year now.

 

What brand is the old PSU?

As augiedoggie said, quality is the deciding factor. If it is on the good PSU list from the link in my previous post, you should be fine, but upgrading may be a little tight in the future.

 

Yup, I tried running a GTX260-216 with the 500 and it wouldn't boot at all.

 

It's an nzxt pp500. I actually just tried it on my pc and the computer turned on and then off after about 2 seconds and the psu smells a bit funky now.

 

I would not trust it as it sounds like a bad brand that would overload very quickly, and it probably has, according to your description of the smell.

 

Just got this power supply it seemed like the best deal that I could find for what is supposed to be a quality name in Antec.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...r1c3watch-_-Power+Supplies-_-Antec-_-17371015

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005