hi, I've read the 'How much power does my computer draw from my PSU?' thread, to get a rough guide...but it seems to be a little out of date (as with anything computer related after 6 - 12 months!) anywho, was wondering if you though a 300w PSU would be ok for: AthlonXP 3200 512Mb PC3200 RAM ABIT NF7 mobo Radeon 9800 Pro (256Mb) Internal modem Pioneer x16 DVD Samsung 52x25x52 CD-RW Floppy (maybe) 2x 80Gb WD Caviar HDD's 2 or 3 case fans upgrading my computer in a weeks time, and was wondering whether I should get a new PSU...can't really afford to though (what with the price for that stuff (well, the CPU, 9800, RAM, mobo and 2 HDD's) what do you all think?
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ estimates about 363w so yuoi might be pushing it a bit on a 300w (if it's a cheapo generic one, then you aint got much chance of it powering it all)
i reckon that site is a bit off, im running over 600w worth of stuff according to that site (and it only allows a max of 4 hard drives) on a 420w psu, and it all runs beautifully and very stable. if you really want to know fins out how many amps each bit draws on both 12v and 5v and compare them which the specs fo the psu, you should be able to find things like that on the manufacturers site. there are huge differences in different 300w supplies, like i have seen a 250w supply which only has 10A on the 12v (where it is pretty much the most important) and enermax 350w has about 35A on the 12v i think. the wattage it is rated for by the manufacturer is usually pretty much irrelevant as a high quality 350w will almost always outperform a cheapie 550w
i think you have missed the point somewhere, by missing possibly the most important part of your system out, your system can't run stable without a good supply of power, I'd say a minimum 350W power supply for what you have there, and I mean a good quality PSU, rather than an ebuyer/own brand psu... save a bit of money else where, for example, why spend mad amounts on the latest processor, anyone within their right mind will buy the CPU with 5% less performance for 60% of the price, that'd give you more than enough money for a high quality PSU
That Radeon 9800 Pro will not be happy with anything less than 350W, and with the other high-quality stuff you have in there, I'd say nearer 400W. And get a high-quality brand, too. My personal favourite would be the 480W Antec TrueBlue - they're soooo quiet
It said that I have 344w of hardware in my Pentium 4 running off a 250w PSU. It works perfectly, too. It also said that I have 351w of hardware in my Pentium 3 running off a 200w PSU. It also works perfectly.
It only gives an estimate of what size psu to have. According to that site I should have a min of 544w but I'm running on a 431w Anyway, back to the original post, I'd say go for a new psu aswell, because with all that hardware you could run into stability issues.
Wow, my system must be utterly weird, as my "estimated" power figure is ~330w, and I have a 400w Antec. You people seem to need your own dedicated nuclear power plants to turn your computers on.
