How much PSU power?

[raisethe3]

I am building a friend's computer when he buys all his computer parts from newegg. He is wondering how many watts of power supply he will need. I know many of you guys think that the PSU calculator out on the web isn't very accurate. Here's the list of the low-down he will be using in his build:

1. MSI K9N2 Diamond motherboard
2. AMD Athlon 64 X2 BE 5400+ (will overclock)
3. Case fans (he has 2, front and back)
4. Western Digital 1 TB and Seagate 320 GB Hard Drives
5. 4 GB Corsair (2x2GB)
6. 8800GT 512MB DDR3
7. DVD-R/W and Blu-Ray drives

He will use this mainly for photoshop and high gaming/entertainment needs.

Thanks to all those who help/contribute.

 

[Lonyo]

400W should be sufficient, even with overclocking (assuming it's a quality 400w unit), but you might want to look at 450~500w just to be extra safe.
I have an E5200@3.3GHz/HD4850/4GB RAM/3 drives on a 400w Corsair CX400 and I haven't seen above ~250w from the wall so far (although it's not been running very long). Count in efficiency and actual draw is more like 200~225w for my system.

 

[raisethe3]

Wow, that's funny. Because my PSU blew up with almost similar specs when using my 450Watts in my computer. Now I have a 650 watts Corsair. This is the spec I have running during the 450 watts while gaming on COD5 back then.

1. MSI K9N2 Platinum motherboard
2. AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 2.8GHz O'CD
3. 2 Case fans (front and back)
4. 2 Hard Drive but was running one while playing
5. DVD-R/W
6. EVGA 8800GT 512MB DDR3
7. 4GB Corsair (2x2GB)

When my PC shut off imediately I suspected because of the RAM upgrade. Come to find out, it was true because I had upgraded from a 2x1GB sticks to the 2x2GB sticks. I was playing COD5 intense gaming that time also. So I saw the smoke and thought, "oh no, what the hell happened?!" So I figured it was the CPU and so when I logged onto a different computer using my brother's. I did the PSU calculation and come to find out that the the PSU was bottleneck when running high. PSU calculated that I needed 525watts during that time. Its amazing because I have been running that system for only 1 week till then it died.

As you can see under my sig, I don't have a PSU because I removed it. But anyhow, I will be getting the Corsair 650watts PSU soon.

 

[yh125d]

Your old 450w PSU didn't die because it didn't have the juice to power your computer. Your old PSU died because it was poor quality. If in fact your old PSU did not have enough power for your PC, it would have simply shut down, not blown up.


Anything 400w+ from seasonic, silverstone, corsair, PCP&C, FSP, OCZ, BFG, etc would work well in your friends rig. I ran a rig almost identical to that (drew more power than that if anything) off a FSP 400w PSU for over a year with no power issues

And we don't think those PSU calculators are inaccurate, we know so . I'll refer you to this thread(http://forums.anandtech.com/me...2262964&enterthread=y)

The OP has a rig that according to antec's PSU calculator would require about 225w, and neweggs calc says around 400w. His killawatt (thingy that measures the actual power used) was only 115 while loaded. Don't trust calculators

 

[raisethe3]

Ok, I see. Thanks man.