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Is it really necessary to have over 350W power supply?

B

bimbs

Member
Hey All,

The new parts to my comp just came in from NewEgg and Im not sure if I should upgrade my PSU. Here are my specs:

CPU: Opteron 144
MOBO: Epox 9NPA+ Ultra
Graphics: Radeon x800 which im going to try and flash to 850
RAM: 1GB Crucial PC3200 + 512MB crucial PC2100
HARD DRIVE: 200GB WD
Case: antec server case of some sort (its a bit old, cant remember model number)
PSU: 350W Antec power supply that came with case.

I would rather not spend the money but if it will really matter I can shell out the 50 odd dollars. I was reading another thread saying that this PSU would be good:
Fortron AX450-PN 450W
What do you guys think, is it worth the money?

On a side note, I have a 200GB Hard Drive that I mainly use for video storage ect. Would it make sense to get a WD Raptor WD360GD for my operating system, games, video editing software, ect.... or will I not really notice a speed difference if I just keep 40GB (of my 200GB drive (7200RPM)) partitioned for my OS as I have it now?

Thanks a lot for all the advice!

 
If you are debating whether or not to spend 50 on a power supply, you probably don't need a Raptor. The increase is nice; but not all that impressive, by all accounts. As for the PSU. You don't want something so ghastly that it'll kill hardware. Antec is decent, at least, so safe to try. If you get loads of crashes, lockups, general weird glitches, you probably need a better power supply. If voltages are drooping all over the place, you need a better power supply. If not, you probably don't.

Most machines, even snappy modern ones, don't draw all that much power(hideously overclocked dual Xenon SLI rigs with a battery of harddrives excepted, of course). 350 real watts is usually more than enough. The problem is that a lot of manufacturers lie like vermin about the specs of their PSUs, which gives rise to the "Even a Celeron wouldn't possibly boot with less than a 450 watt PSU" myth. If your PSU is something you got with a 10 dollar case, made of tinfoil and child laborours, then sure, a kilowatt unit probably wouldn't boot my calculator; but with good PSUs, you can get away with much less.
 
just to put things in perspective, my rig consists of:

2.8ghz prescott (power hungry)
160gb sata
6600gt

everything is powered by the antec 380watt psu, which is more than enough. i could probably add 2 more hard drives and still have enough power left over.
 
Thanks for the replies.

The case cost around 100 dollars (although this was 4 years ago), so I think the PSU should be okay. I haven't really overclocked a system before but wanted to start trying it out on this one. I was also going to "attempt" to sleeve my PSU (however, this could potentially fail miserably) and didn't want to waste the time on my currect PSU if I was just going to have to upgrade it. About the Hard Drive, I have a bit of money to spend, I just dont want to waste it for pointless upgrades where I wont notice a difference. My Main problem with my current Hard Drive is it has problems sharing files between my two partitions, so I was thinking that a different hard drive would speed things up if I am constantly transfering files from different partitions.

Another unrelated question on the "is it worth it" lines, it is worth it to get a different heatsink for processor if I plan to overclock slightly? Or will the retail AMD (in an opteron 144 CPU retail box) be somewhat okay? Thanks a lot for all the advice!
 
I think your system will run, but you didint specified if you will use a couple of HD's, sound card, or other components.

I didint trusted those (included) PSU's, so I bought a 550W one for my new rig.

PD: If ya going to OC, buy a decent PSU. I recomend any fortron or antec over 400W.
 
"you didint specified if you will use a couple of HD's, sound card, or other components. "
I have a pretty lowkey hercules III 7.1 sound card and only one hard drive at the moment. I'm still debating on getting a second Hard Drive (if I do it will be a WD raptor) and use my 200GB as storage only.

"the stock heatsink will be fine for small overclocking."
Sounds good, If I really wanted to try and overclock it a lot (which i've read the opteron's are good at), I should prolly get an "other than AMD retail boxed heatsink" heatsink though?

Thanks again and sorry for all these cyclical questions.
 
Yes the Fotron 450w is recomended a lot for a quality but affordable PSU.

Fvck the 36GB Raptor... The 74GB are decently faster but way too expensive. 7200 rpm, 8/16mb cache drives seem to be your best overall, have been for a while. Just keep your current drive with OS partition.

You might be able to get by with the 350w. I actually think you should give it a shot, and report back to us if you notice problems. I'm siding more that it would work, even under load, as long as you don't have many other devices.
 
My old rig had a 350 watt PSU in it. I had P4 2.53, 1gb RAM, 2 200gb HDD, sound card, ATI 9800 Pro and 2 optical drives. It ran everything fine but for some reason when I went to trun the 9800 to 8x APG the system would lock up. I got a new PSU and problem solved.
 
you should be good to go, look at my rig in sig with psu and i have been running it this way for 1.5yrs (before the x800xtpe i had a 9800pro)
 
You didn't mention any optical drives. These also add to the load on your PSU.

I'm running a Prescott 3 Ghz CPU, Seagate 160 Gb SATA HD, Plextor DVDW and Plextor CDRW in a Antec Sonata case w/380W PSU, 1G memory. Everything works fine.

Antec PSU's put out very close to their rated wattage.

My thought is that you are real close with the 350W PSU so watch what you add.
 
Hey guys, thanks a lot for all the replies. I was just putting in my new EpoX board and realized that, GUESS WHAT, no 24 pin connector because my antec case is 4-5 years old. I guess they only had 20 pin back then. So it looks like im gonna have to get a new PSU no matter what....good thing I didn't start sleeving yet. Anyways, anyone have any reccomendations for a good PSU. Im leaning towards thermaltake or fortron source. Thanks a lot. (Oh and I bought the zalman 7700CU, thanks for the tip InLine)

 
okay hopefully this will be my last question. I'm looking at PSU's on newegg and am getting pretty confused. Do I have to get one that says 24-pin connection, or will the 20+4pin work just fine (ie, will I be able to connect two to make a 24 pin connection?). Thanks a lot.
 
Originally posted by: bimbs
okay hopefully this will be my last question. I'm looking at PSU's on newegg and am getting pretty confused. Do I have to get one that says 24-pin connection, or will the 20+4pin work just fine (ie, will I be able to connect two to make a 24 pin connection?). Thanks a lot.
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