So my computer may explode.

[Farmer]

A bit of backstory. Two years ago, I refitted my desktop with the latest and greatest graphics card I could afford: an ASUS GTX 275. It's a good card and it's served me well since.

However, when I refitted the machine I was fairly new to the whole business of choosing parts. Having spent a cool £160 on the graphics card, I decided to cut corners by buying a cheap, no-name power supply from Amazon. This very one, in fact. I stress that those reviews were not available at the time, but even so it was the move of an idiot and one for which I'm now paying the price.

You see, over the last few months, the power supply has begun to fail in the form of cutouts under heavy load, or even sometimes at random. They started sporadically and have recently increased to four or five times a day. Research shows that this is likely a sign of imminent, catastrophic failure which I suspect would take out the rest of my machine with it. I've unplugged the machine and am writing this on my backup desktop: a 2004 model eMac. Hardly a substitute.

The bottom line is that I need a replacement PSU. Being a student on an extremely low income, I took a look at other budget power supplies but I'm avoiding them like the plague because of the likelihood of lightning striking twice. Words like "exploded" and "shower of sparks" are not encouraging things to read in product reviews.

I'm forced to buy a branded model with recognized reliability. The problem is that Amazon and Ebuyer list appropriate models around the £60-70 mark: something that would take months of saving to collect. My system's requirements are a 550w minimum with 24 pin motherboard connection and 2x 6 pin plugs.

So I'm asking to draw on your collective experience. Do you know of any places where such a PSU could be found for less? Preferably one that won't start a fire?

[Esrever]

Compared to those prices, NCIX is a steal:

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?minorcatid=1066

But I have no idea how much it would cost to ship to the UK, or what kind of customs duty would be on it.

[Crisis]

550W minimum? That seems like a lot. Are you sure you need all that?

This was the best deal I could find. But this is slightly cheaper if you can go under by 50W. (Although the price difference is negligible; you could just skip a meal or two.)

(The two most helpful rersources for me were the Ars Technica system guides and the Something Awful parts-picking megathread.)