Is 300 watts PSU sufficent for this?

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Mavrick

Senior member
Mar 11, 2001
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I've been running an Athlon Thunderbird 1Ghz (on AMD-761 chipset) with a GeForce2 GTS, 2 7200 rpm hard drives, a dvd-rom and a cd-rw drive, 2 sticks of DDR-RAM (266 Mhz), 2 NIC, a sound card and 2 case fans for quite some time with no problems on a 300 watt power supply (11A on +12V ramp).

However, I recently bought an All-in-Wonder Radeon 9600 video card and an an AthlonXP 2200+ (rev. A). I've plugged in the Radeon and everything works and it seems stable, but I was beginning to wonder if the PSU will be able to handle the new Athlon fine. Anybody has an idea?
 
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Mavrick

Senior member
Mar 11, 2001
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It's a YoungYear Y2k. As I said, it is stated to have 11A on the +12V rail, 22A on the +5V and 15A on the +3.3V
 
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Mavrick

Senior member
Mar 11, 2001
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I'll probably try it tomorrow. Maybe I'll unplug a few things from the PC before!!
 
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imported_electron

Senior member
Nov 6, 2005
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Originally posted by: montag451
What make is your psu?
A reputable 300w is more trustworthy than a cheapie 500w.
Click to expand...

That is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. And I hear it perpetuated over and over again by the same numbskulls who've obviously never heard of Underwriter's Laboratories.
 
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maluckey

Platinum Member
Jan 31, 2003
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Mavrick,

It's fine.

electron,

Not to say that all 500 watt units are crap, but SOME are. You've obviously heard of FSP, who's 300 watt PSU walks all over some 500 watt POS PSU's. It's like car stereo wattage in that they lie as much as they can without actually lying. Some test at 25 C. PSU temp instead of ambient temp, which is only attainable in a VERY cold room. Some have only a 50,000 MTBF at 25C, which is half the life of the better ones, while some advertise only PEAK wattage numbers instead of sustained wattage.

Easy to lie, harder to hide when they die a horrible death and take out half your goods with them.
 
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Operandi

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,508
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Originally posted by: Mavrick
It's a YoungYear Y2k. As I said, it is stated to have 11A on the +12V rail, 22A on the +5V and 15A on the +3.3V
Click to expand...

Youngyear makes some pretty sh!tty PSUs, namely Aspire, MGE, logisys, and Ultra.

I would ditch it if you respect the rest of your hardware.
 
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cubby1223

Lifer
May 24, 2004
13,518
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The whole PSU industry is bad in my eyes. It seems that wattage used to mean the continuous sustainable power, which is what makes most sense. But then it shifted so that wattage now means the peak power output (i.e., not sustainable), and those numbers are listed based on a 220v input, which we don't have in the U.S. You also see notes like "5v+3.3v=150W MAX", which means there is no possible way you're ever achieving the rated wattage even under the most ideal of situations! Just do the math from the side of the PSU, watts=volts*amps.

So like maluckey said, there is a lot of intentional deception in wattage ratings.
 
phaxmohdem

phaxmohdem

Golden Member
Aug 18, 2004
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www.avxmedia.com
I ran an Athlon XP 2500+/2 Sticks RAM/2 HDD's/2 Optical Drives/Geforce 5200/Audigy on a 250W PS for the longest time. I sold the rig to my friend, and it is still running like a champ.
 
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Operandi

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,508
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Originally posted by: Jinhideo21
Sorry for intruding on this thread, but is the psu in a Fudin case reliable?

I was thinking of getting this case.
http://shop3.outpost.com/product/3850927?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Or would you guys recommend this one?
http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4470276?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
Click to expand...

Stupid looking cases correlate really well with horrible power supplies. The worse the case looks the worse the PSU is going to be, based on that assumption the Fudin probably has the worst PSU ever made.

The Antec is nice case with a pretty good PSU.
 
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V00D00

Golden Member
May 25, 2003
1,834
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I've got 6 - 7200 rpm hard drives, 3.4ghz prescott, a radeon x600xt and 512mb DDR2 PC4200 on a 430 watt Antec TruePower.

The hard drives really suck up a lot of power. I think my psu might even be going bad. My bios reports that the 3v rail is pushing out 2.944 volts at times. It shows up in red too, so that can't be good. Must be all those damn hard drives. I think I might throw on another and see if it dips some more. I have like 3 more IDE slots open and 4 more SATA ports.

Your setup isn't even stressing that 300watt.
 
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V00D00

Golden Member
May 25, 2003
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biostud

biostud

Lifer
Feb 27, 2003
18,862
5,744
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Originally posted by: electron
Originally posted by: montag451
What make is your psu?
A reputable 300w is more trustworthy than a cheapie 500w.
Click to expand...

That is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. And I hear it perpetuated over and over again by the same numbskulls who've obviously never heard of Underwriter's Laboratories.
Click to expand...

The thing is that most cheap PSU's are rated with peak power rather than sustained as reliable brands do. Also many cheap brands label each rail with very high Amps, but it turns out that combined load often is quite less. That's one of the reasons you have to be aware when you can get a "500W" PSU for $30.
 
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dexvx

Diamond Member
Feb 2, 2000
3,899
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0
Originally posted by: Operandi
Stupid looking cases correlate really well with horrible power supplies. The worse the case looks the worse the PSU is going to be, based on that assumption the Fudin probably has the worst PSU ever made.

The Antec is nice case with a pretty good PSU.
Click to expand...

Now that is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard, being the fact that how a case looks is entirely subjective. I for one, think most Antec cases look like crap, except for the Sonata and Minuet II.
 
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Operandi

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,508
0
0
Originally posted by: dexvx
Originally posted by: Operandi
Stupid looking cases correlate really well with horrible power supplies. The worse the case looks the worse the PSU is going to be, based on that assumption the Fudin probably has the worst PSU ever made.

The Antec is nice case with a pretty good PSU.
Click to expand...

Now that is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard, being the fact that how a case looks is entirely subjective. I for one, think most Antec cases look like crap, except for the Sonata and Minuet II.
Click to expand...

Sure it's subjective technically but some people (or lots of them apparently) just have bad tastes.

To be more specific, as the number of pointless LEDs and windows (stupid looking) increases so dose the lack of quality.
 
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