Do I need to upgrade my PSU? Should I?

[thecoffeeguy]

So, I have had my current PS for about 4 years now.

This is what I bought:

Enhance ENP-5150GH 500W ATX12V Rev.2.2 (24/20+8/4+6)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817372002

Been working great. No problems at all.

However, I just upgraded my 4 year old rig to the following:

AMD X4 945 Deneb - 3.0ghz
ASRock mobo
4gigs DDR3 1600 memory

No plans to OC.

I have the following other parts:

Nvidia GTX 260
DVD Burner
(1) 10,000 SATA Drive
(1) 7,200 SATA Drive

I wasn't sure if I should upgrade or not, so I wanted to ask here.

Thanks for the help.

 

[rrplay]

I would upgrade to a 650W power supply, because several Nvidia GTX 260 cards require 500W and up. & check out your specs & connections [some require 2 6-pin Molex] for your video card.

 

[theAnimal]

500W is plenty for that rig.

 

[fffblackmage]

What you have should be fine for now, but I'd keep an eye out for good deal on a quality 500W PSU with a stronger 12V rail.

 

[Rifter]

thats a pretty weak psu, i would keep my eyes open for a sale on a quality 550-650W unit.

 

[TemjinGold]

What you have should be fine for now, but I'd keep an eye out for good deal on a quality 500W PSU with a stronger 12V rail.

This. You'll want one with less of the power in the not-so-useful 3.3v/5v rails and more of it on the 12v. 500 watts is more than enough since you don't OC.

For comparison, I recently hooked the rig in my sig to an APC UPS that also gives me a real-time digital reading of how much power I'm drawing and even with my HDTV also plugged in, the most I've seen it go up to is 250 watts when gaming (40 of that is the TV so the system is really only pulling 210 tops.) Non-gaming use is like 170 watts (so 130 if you minus the TV) and I am OCing lightly. People definitely greatly overestimate what their systems need.

Edit: I should clarify--the APC is only telling me how much juice the PSU is drawing. Since the PSU is ~80% efficient, the actual power my system requires is even less than those numbers. As you can see, a 300w PSU could easily power what I have provided it had the 6-pin connectors for my vid card.