Is 250W enough power?

[minus1972]

hey...I'm looking at putting together a new rig for school to free up some space in my room this year and to upgrade. The shuttle machines look nice and clean, plus I would put it right on my desk with no problem. Thing is like a few others I've been waiting years for Half-Life 2 and I want this computer to get the most out of it. I'm thinking about putting in a 9800pro, but with everything else I'm not sure if the 250W PS in the shuttle can handle it. Do I have a valid fear here or should I be alright?

here's what I'm looking at so far:

Shuttle XPC Black Barebone System for Socket 478 at 533/800MHz FSB Intel CPU
Intel Pentium 4/ 2.8E GHz 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache, Hyper Threading
Corsair Value Select 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200
SAMSUNG 120GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 PCI Sound Card
a DVD/R drive, and a 9800pro

Thanks.

 

[carni]

Monarch builds AMD 64s with 9800 Pros in their SFF box, and their standard PSU is 220 watts. Tehy have a break down showing you teh power consumpton that proves that that is aenough juice. SO as long as you don't go to a 6800 series card you should be fine.

 

[RaNDoMMAI]

your find dude

I know someone with your rig expect they have the northwood(which i would suggest since it is cooler) chip and a gig of ram and they are using the shuttle old 200W PSU

~RaNDoM

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: minus1972
hey...I'm looking at putting together a new rig for school to free up some space in my room this year and to upgrade. The shuttle machines look nice and clean, plus I would put it right on my desk with no problem. Thing is like a few others I've been waiting years for Half-Life 2 and I want this computer to get the most out of it. I'm thinking about putting in a 9800pro, but with everything else I'm not sure if the 250W PS in the shuttle can handle it. Do I have a valid fear here or should I be alright?

here's what I'm looking at so far:

Shuttle XPC Black Barebone System for Socket 478 at 533/800MHz FSB Intel CPU
Intel Pentium 4/ 2.8E GHz 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache, Hyper Threading
Corsair Value Select 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200
SAMSUNG 120GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 PCI Sound Card
a DVD/R drive, and a 9800pro

Thanks.

If you're looking to "get the most out of D3/HL2/etc" then get an Athlon-64 based machine. And don't shy away from the high-end graphics. The Shuttle PSUs are more than up to handling the demands of a vanilla 6800 or even a 6800GT.

- M4H

 

[Tostada]

If you're looking for gaming performance, I would assume you've seen all the benchmarks where cheap Athlon 64's beat expensive P4 EE's.

If you really want a SFF system, that's cool, but you do pay extra for a more limited system. People recommend 19" CRT's for students just because it's easy to steal an LCD and hard to lug off a 60 lb. CRT without anybody noticing. Along those lines, if you're taking it to school, I'd be worried about someone just sticking a SFF system in a backpack if you left your door open.

You'd have a much better gaming system if you got a 6800GT and then the fastest A64 you could in your budget -- although I haven't really looked into SFF A64's recently, I know there are some with decent PSU's that can handle a 6800.

 

[jpeyton]

actually, if you have a good sff psu, you can go with any cofig you want. i've seen people running 6800GTs o/c, precotts, whatever.