I've been looking into what PSU to get for a new rig, and I'm having a few problems making my decision.

I've heard that multi-rail PSUs are a little harder to balance since you need to make sure that components don't take up too much power from the same rail. I've also heard, however, that single rails have a little higher risk of catching on fire (?!). Lastly, I can't seem to find a moderately priced modular PSU that has a single rail. Silverstone makes a few, but they're rather expensive.

I think for my first rig I'd prefer a modular PSU since it would make cable management easier, but I also think working with a single rail would be easier.

Can anyone help me out here? Just how much of a difficulty will multiple rails be?

Catching fire?! Where did you get that? That's crazy. Where would you even get the figures in order to make that conclusion? Sounds made up to me...

Anyways, single rail is definitely preferable if all things are equal, but it's not a big deal. Most users will never know the difference between single/multi-rail. This is one of those things that starts as a valid but relatively unimportant thing but gets spun into "OMG, you have to have single-rail!" Realistically it will probably make no difference to you. If you're really that concerned about it but you also want modular cables (another thing people make too big a deal over, IMO, but that's a whole other thread), just overkill it a little on the wattage rating and you'll be fine.

haha, the catching fire thing was something I came across when I did a little wikipedia researching. That's why I decided to post this thread...it didn't seem like a big cause for concern, but it gnawed at me a bit.

Anyway, that makes me a little more relaxed...I'll still have to decide what route to go, but at least there's no inherent danger either way

Read this:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3990

What system are you looking to power with that?

That pretty much has all the bases covered.
That single rail is 'better' than multi rail is basically FUD.
As long as it has the right connectors as standard and is powerful enough for your system then that's fine.

I think it's easier to be confident with a large single rail PSU, because large single rail PSUs are generally of a very high quality, whereas a multi rail PSU could be anything from the highest quality to the worst...

There might be bad, large single rail PSUs, but I've never heard of one...

I think it is mentioned previously but I feel the only problem with single rail power supplies is the very large current limit "kick in" point, sometimes over 100A. At least on good quality multi rail power supplies you can rely on current limiting somewere in the region of 40A should things go wrong.

A lot of the bad multi rail PSU out there are in effect single rail. They just take two, four or six sets of wires from the exact same 12V point, omit current limiting for individual rails and call them "multi rail".

If your into wire management, why not cut holes in the metal panel that the motherboard is mounted to and pass them around the back. I've seen it done and it looks real nice.

I think a quality PSU is quality, regardless of how they get the power to you. Get a recommended one from a reputable company and that will be the best you can do.

If you buy a decent PSU it really doesn't matter. My PSU is a single-rail design and I prefer them simply because I don't have to worry about overloading any single rail. It's just one less thing that can cause problems when OC'ing.

In fact, I think this is the route I will take. Modular PSUs are a bit pricy, it seems, so I've decided to go with a non-modular, single-rail PSU. Combined with the NZXT Tempest case, which already has cutouts in the mobo tray, I should be able to run the cables pretty well.

Thanks for the links and advice, everyone

Good luck with the build m8 and post some pictures for us when it's done.

Will do...it'll be a month or so, though, I'm just trying to get all my research done right now. Never really dealt with hardware before, except on a superficial "this is better than that" level.