Do I need at least a 400W power supply?

[agould24]

Currently, I have a 300W power supply in my system. My system contains the following parts:

- AMD Athlon XP 2000+
- 60GB Maxtor 7200 HD
- 20GB Quantum 7200RPM HD
- Pioneer 16X DVD-ROM A106
- Yamaha 3200EVK CD-RW
- Internal ATAPI 250MB ZIP
- 3 x 80mm case fans

And when it comes out:

- ATI Radeon 9500 Pro (which requires additional power from the power supply)

I'm pretty sure my current 300W power supply is overworking itself, and I KNOW it will be when I put a Radeon 9500 Pro in it.

How much power should I be looking for in running this rig?

 

[Tripleshot]

Silly question. Of course morwe power is better. Get a good quality power supply rated at at least 450 and set to run P4 as well. Some of them now have varialble fan speed. check those out. 300 watt is good for medium use Pc's only if you are using high end CPUs. I understand the CPU draw on an Athlon Xp is at least 75 watts by itself. Maybe more for P4's

 

[agould24]

Interesting... I had my eye on the Antec True430.

I noticed that the continuous maximum power is 410W on that model. On the True480, the continuous maximum is 460W. Perhaps the True480 is more desireable than the True430 for my use?

My PC is on 24/7 and I play a lot of games, so needless to say it's not a medium use PC.

 

[microAmp]

The power looks fine.

 

[agould24]

Which is fine, the True430?

 

[Mavrick007]

Give me a break, you don't need the 480watt or even the 430watt. Don't go into hype, just make sure that you have a "quality" psu that has "recommended" specs for enough amps and combined watts on the 3.3 and 5v rails, or in the case of the truepower supplies, the rails are separate.

My machine is about the same as yours, cept I have a bunch more case fans, bigger hds, and no dvd burner. I had the Antec Truepower 430watt, but it died suddenly and I had to replace it with a spare, brand new Sparkle 300watt psu, which does the job excellently. Any psu can die at any given time, but having a quality one should help in maintaining less fluxuations in your rails and last alot longer overall. If you bought a high powered cheap psu, you might need one that is 400watt or more to equal the stability of one quality 300watt psu or it might not even compare.

I would say that if you are worried for future use, you might want to go with a 350 or 380watt psu at the minimum since you have so many devices in your machine (do you have an ide card inside or a raid controller?). You could probably even do fine with a Truepower 330watt psu. Don't get me wrong, there wouldn't be any problem with using a 430watt psu but it's not needed, and I really wouldn't go with the 480 cause the 380-430 would do the job just as well and save you some money.

 

[agould24]

Hmm, going with a True380 would save me about $20 CDN over the True430. My current power supply is an Antec too (300W -- came with my Antec SX830 case 18 months ago). But upon looking over the specs for the Radeon 9500/9700 series cards -- ATI recommends a minimum 350W PS when using the card.

My new motherboard has RAID capabilities, and I do plan on using those within the next 6 months. Will this make a difference in power requirements? It will be a pair of IDE disks (probably Serial-ATA).

 

[dszd0g]

This is what sireric from ATI says for the 9700 Pro over at rage3d. I have no idea what they say about the 9500 Pro.

Originally posted by sireric
We have not changed the 300w suggested PSU. However, it's so system dependant, that it's hard to establish a real requirement that could work accross all these different systems. There are some systems that work fine with 250W PSU, and others require 450W PSUs.

Basically, if you are running a recent CPU, a 9700p, a HD and sound card, then 300w is generally adequate, at least from a good brand name.

If you have multiple CPUs, overclock your CPU, multiple HDs, multiple PCI cards, etc..., then 300W will not probably not cut it.