Another lame "how much do I need" thread

[Paladin Blake]

I know this subject has been beaten like some sort of dead horse, but I'm curious as to whether a substantial increase in the number of fans will impact my power supply requirements.

I'm switching cases to a full-tower with 8 case fans (as opposed to my current 2) and I plan to buy a single 4870. Right now I'm using an:

e6600 at stock (although I might overclock once airflow increases with the new case);
a p5w dh deluxe motherboard,
two 7,200rpm hard drives;
a DVD burner;
and a DVD-Rom drive.

Is my current 530w Antec Truepower 2.0 enough to support the increase in fans and upgraded video card? If not, what's a good (preferably modular) PSU that'll last me through a few generations of processors and single-video card systems?

I'm sure you guys are sick to death of answering these kinds of questions, and I apologise for adding onto the heap of posts that you have to wade through. Thanks in advance.

 

[Jessica69]

Just add up the amperage of all the fans you plan on putting into your case and multiply by 12 to get your needed wattage to run them all.

For instance, Scythe S-Flex "F" fans take 0.20A, or 2.4W each.....so 8 would be just short of 20W. Even if your selected fans took 0.5A, all eight would only total 48W....still not a huge amount. I'd really not worry a whole lot about the fans.....but personally, the S-Flex fans are excellent as are, from what I've been told, the Noctua P fans. But the big favorite of a lot of people are the Yate Loons found at Petra's.....and ONLY at Petra's (I say only Petra's because it seems that only Petra's buys directly from Yate-Loon while everyone else buys from a middleman/distributor.....and no other YL's bought from anywhere else even come close in performance, quietness, cfm output, etc. to the YL fans that Petra's sells.) The Yate-Loon medium speed fans take 0.3A max, so draw only 3.6W per fan....not bad, and at a price of $6/ea (or 4 for $20), you cannot beat the price/performance ratio. They'd be your best bet in fan choice given how many you want to use.....

http://www.petrastechshop.com/12yalod1cafa1.html


Follow this link to see what I mean about YL fans from Petra's and from other sellers and why they're different and how they're different: http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...howthread.php?t=170224

 

[mpilchfamily]

First of all the fans make little to no diffrence in the amount of power a system pulls from the PSU. The issue here isn't the fans but the video card upgrade. You may want to upgrade to be better quality PSU for that card but what you have should be fine as long as you don't OC the system.

 

[Paladin Blake]

Thank you guys very much. I couldn't find anything about fan PSU requirements, and the fact that my PSU isn't so hot is really helpful. I was thinking about getting a new one, so I think I might just do that now.

 

[BladeVenom]

Fans take up little wattage. Looking at some cheap 80mm fans I bought in bulk, they use less than 2 watts apiece.

 

[Excelsior]

I have two 7200rpm HDs, a Q6700, one dvd burner, and one 120mm fan. Using an Antec 430W Earthwatts. Runs very well.

So your PSU is plenty.