At what point is 300w not enough in a Palimino system?

[GreenLantern]

Say the base was an:
AMD XP 2000+
64MB Video Card (latest (8500 or Ti-500))
SB Audigy
CD
CDRW
2 40GB 7200's

now you add a
DVD player, then a DVD burner

would that do it? what else could eat up power?

Trying to spec out a system with reasonable expandability🙂

 

[Soulkeeper]

a 300 isn't enough on my 1ghz system with 1 hd in it
you would want something much higher like 400watt with that system
it all mostly depends on how many amps are supplied to the rails but not many 300 watters can really handle an athlon system anymore
you can always try and see if it runs
pay attention to the voltages on the different rails and see how much they droop (more than 5% is bad)
if it works then more power to ya but it could be unstable
so just try it out won't hurt anything
i am waiting for anandtech to do their power supply round up that would be interesting cause i am thinking about getting a new psu myself

 

[saltedeggman]

it really depends on the quality of the PSU...

antec, enermax, sparkle, pcpowercooling makes very good psu

 

[erikiksaz]

Wattage is like watts, it doesn't always tell you the truth behind the rating... Therefore:

<<it really depends on the quality of the PSU...>>

 

[JackOfHearts]

I had a 1.2 GHZ T-Bird on a 300 watt noname PSU with 3 HD's and a 40x CD-ROM 16x DVD-ROM and 4x 4x 32x CD-RW..... No problem even when I OC'ed no problem... I have 350 right now still no problem ppl that think you need a 500 watt supply for a home desktop system are crazy unless you have a HD farm in there it should be no problem... I would say for just a 1 burner a dvd player and 1 HD a 250 would be fine...

 

[Adul]

well I have a Antex 300 watt PS with a 1.4 ghz thunderbird, 1 cd-r, 1dvd, 1 cd-rom, 2 hd, 4 case fans, scsi, sound, 2 nics, floppy, geforce gts-v
and it all runs nice and stable.

 

[MWink]

I have yet to come across any system a 300W could not power.

 

[sandorski]

Well, if you check out "Wowza" in my sig, it runs fine with an Antec 300watt ps, but only with 2 case fans. The moment I add another case fan the system is guaranteed to lockup once a day.

 

[psteng19]

i have a 250 watt no-name AMD approved power supply.

it powers a 1 ghz t-bird, gf2 ti, 3 case fans, and a ton of other peripherals with no problems.

 

[Strych9]

Antec 300 watt running a dual XP 1600 system with no problems.

 

[Pariah]

If you have a halfway decent 300W PS, there is no single CPU setup that is even remotely typical (read: no 30 drive SCSI array somehow crammed into the case) that should have the slightest problem powering it. As mentioned above, there are people running SMP systems on 300W, a second AMD CPU will typically use more power than everything else in the system combined, with the occasional exception of the video card.

 

[Supahfreak]

What about if you run a bunch of fans, would that require more wattage?!?!?! thinking of adding a blowhole but just wondering...

FreAk😀

 

[Strych9]

My dually has 4 80mm case fans and 2 80mm cpu fans. Still no problem.

 

[Huz]

I've got a very similar setup and I'm running 145 FSB easily with no problems at all. It all depends on what exactly you want to do and, like the others said, the quality of the power supply. I have a 300w Sparkle in my rig - check the sig. =)