Is my old PSU gonna be enough for an upgrade?

[ChaoticMonk]

Hi all.

I'm getting the following:
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor

And I intend on keeping my Radeon x1650 series PCIe card and my DDR400 ram and my system is currently running with a CompUSA 400w PSU.

I wanted to know if the PSU would be enough to handle the upgrades or not.

Heres is what it says on the PSU box:
+3.3V +5V +12V -5V -12V +5Vsb
..20A...30A..15A..0.5A..0.5A..2A

Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

Sorry ChaoticMonk. This thread has disintergrated, then it went downhill from there. If your questions were not answered within this thread, please feel free to start a new one. For the other members, please keep this on track next time and be courteous to one another. I know that can be hard sometimes but seriously, try harder.

esquared
Anandtech Senior Moderator

 

[mpilchfamily]

You will need to get a new PSU.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Yeah... Only 15A on the +12V rail is NOT good.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: ChaoticMonk
Hi all.

I'm getting the following:
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor

And I intend on keeping my Radeon x1650 series PCIe card and my DDR400 ram and my system is currently running with a CompUSA 400w PSU.

I wanted to know if the PSU would be enough to handle the upgrades or not.

Heres is what it says on the PSU box:
+3.3V +5V +12V -5V -12V +5Vsb
..20A...30A..15A..0.5A..0.5A..2A

Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

You'll be fine. The 1650 is a fairly low-power chip/card setup, and with just a quad 6600 in there it's not a big deal.

I've put an nvidia 8800GTS/320 + 3 drives, 2 TV tuners (one of them a dual tuner), and a Q6600 into a 300W Acer box. Your 400W PSU gives vastly more headroom and it's doing quite a bit less too.

(The 300W Acer box has 3 HDDs in it now, plus a eSATA card, plus the Q6600; the 8800GTS/320 and tuners have moved onwards...the 8800GTS/320 + another Q6600 are in a Dell Inspiron 530, happily working in a system with a 350W PSU.)

 

[MarcVenice]

Showdown ? I guess all we can do now is ask Chaoticmonk to try the q6600 on that PSU and see if it works, and for how long. It's not so much the wattage though, it's the amps on the 12v rail. Sounds like a low qaulity PSU as well, so I very much doubt it can put out 400w at 50c continous.

Chaoticmonk, not sure if I read it correctly, but do you intend on using your ddr 400mhz ram in that gigabyte ds3l ? Because that's not going to work, you're going to have to buy some ddr2 667/800 mhz ram.

 

[dclive]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2864&p=12

Anandtech (granted, in talking about watts) says it requires a 200W PSU (without any extras like add'l hard drives, PCI add-in cards, etc.), so a 250W PSU should be plenty. Anything above that is gravy.

Note: No extra power connector is required for the 1650XT. That suggests the 1650 doesn't need one either. That suggests that the power draw is low.

From Anandtech: "However, the X1650 XT isn't a very power hungry card, so most users won't need to worry about its consumption. "
And that's with a 1650XT, and I suspect the Pro uses a bit less power.

 

[jonnyGURU]

It isn't a very power hungry card, no. But with a PSU with only 15A of power on the +12V... I don't exactly feel good about that PSU. That's only 180W. I'd almost rather recommend a 250W power supply over whatever it is OP has.

I personally don't know much about this particular "CompUSA" brand PSU, but I'm pretty sure it's NOT rated at continuous and it's NOT rated at anything over room temperature. I would be surprised to learn that it was actually capable of putting out anything over 250W continuous at operating temperature.

Originally posted by: dclive
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2864&p=12

Anandtech (granted, in talking about watts) says it requires a 200W PSU (without any extras like add'l hard drives, PCI add-in cards, etc.), so a 250W PSU should be plenty. Anything above that is gravy.

Those graphs should only be used as a reference to compare power consumption of one card vs. another.

You do realize that "full load" in those tests means "few of the demos from 3dMark06." A computer can use more power booting into Windows than 3DMark uses. Also, a measurement from the wall using a household power meter device does not take into account transient loads.

 

[dclive]

In any case, transient or not, it doesn't require much at all - it's a very low-end (low-power using) system. When a 8800GTS/320 and 3 hard drives, 2 TV tuners, and a quad CPU only need 300W of power, a far smaller, simpler system doesn't need 400W of power (or more) !!

 

[MarcVenice]

No, not if those 400w are on the 12v rail, like on qaulity units, where the 12v rails can put out like 80-90% of the total wattage. This particular unit only has 15a on the 12v rail though, thats like Jonny said 180w. A q6600 alone can pull 100w. Now, add in the HD's, the not so powerhungry videocard, the casefan(s) and it's not hard to imagine that his pc will draw more then 180w on the 12v rail.

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: ChaoticMonk
Hi all.

I'm getting the following:
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor

And I intend on keeping my Radeon x1650 series PCIe card and my DDR400 ram and my system is currently running with a CompUSA 400w PSU.

I wanted to know if the PSU would be enough to handle the upgrades or not.

Heres is what it says on the PSU box:
+3.3V +5V +12V -5V -12V +5Vsb
..20A...30A..15A..0.5A..0.5A..2A

Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

I think you are a little on the weak side with that PS, but if you don't intend to OC you should be ok...but I would start looking at some sales for a larger PS.

 

[dclive]

Anandtech link showing Anand's Quad system with brand new nVidia 9800GTX is perfectly happy with 350W PSU:
http://www.tomshardware.com/20...gtx_review/page12.html

 

[dclive]

Ooops - Tom's link, not Anands!

 

[MarcVenice]

Sigh this is getting old very fast. They tested in ONE single game, test driver unlimited. Look up AT's reviews, where BioShock uses 300w under load, and Crysis uses 400w under load for example. That's a BIG difference between two games. And for sure, a 350w PSU will power it most likely, but those PSU's can put out 25a on the 12v rails, which is like 300w out of the total 350w. So can you PLEASE stop arguing that his WEAK PSU with 15a on the 12v rail can still handle a q6600 + 9800gtx ?

And even IF you use a 350w PSU you will be PUSHING it, and it's fan speed will ramp up, making the PSU noisier then you might like it to be, so there's nothing wrong with a brand name 450-500w PSU.

 

[dclive]

I'm not suggesting that. OTOH, I do believe his 400W PSU can easily (easily!) power a quad box with 1650 GPU.

In posting these links I'm attempting to provide a reference source that shows *why* I believe an older system can easily power a low-power CPU - by highlighting that newer systems running far more stressful CPUs and GPUs can easily handle far more with far less power.

There's never anything wrong with buying lots of new stuff - except that frequently people don't need to do so, and also it costs money, which many of us would rather put into our 401(k) rather than a computer fund, especially if there's no perceptible difference in actual performance.

 

[dclive]

AT's reviews, Marc, use Skulltrail - with *2* quad - extreme CPUs. Not a good power usage comparison.

 

[MarcVenice]

It's not so much the actual figures I'm worried about, it's the fact that TWO different games, both FPS's, showed a difference of 100w in power usage, from 300 to 400w. One game isn't anything to go of on if you keep that in mind. As jonnyguru ALSO stated, pc's often use more power when booting then when playing games. You also totaly ignored the fact that you're pushing a 350w PSU harder then I personaly, and others might feel the same way, feel comfortable with, especially since the fan speed will ramp up. Besides that, there's nothing wrong with spending 50-75$ on a PSU when that's 1/10th of your total purchasing price, and even qaulity 350w PSU's will cost around 50$, so why not get a 450vx or 550vx for the same money ?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
It's not so much the actual figures I'm worried about, it's the fact that TWO different games, both FPS's, showed a difference of 100w in power usage, from 300 to 400w.

I didn't see that in the review - do you have the URL for that?

As jonnyguru ALSO stated, pc's often use more power when booting then when playing games. You also totaly ignored the fact that you're pushing a 350w PSU harder then I personaly, and others might feel the same way, feel comfortable with, especially since the fan speed will ramp up.

If you're giving it under 350W of power, what is the issue you're solving (by giving it less)? If the fan isn't an issue (I've not had issues with fans or noise from that fan) then...what issue are you solving?

Bear in mind it's 265W per Tom's review, and he said he'd be very comfortable with his (single) Quad-core setup + 9800GTX with a 350W PSU. Looks perfectly appropriate to me....

 

[jonnyGURU]

You do realize that computer power draw is not linear, right?

Just checking because it just seems that the logic you use ignores the fact that computer's power usage varies wildly based on what the computer is doing.

Let me give you an example: My quad-father with a pair of Ultra's only pulls about 800W from the wall while running 3DMark, COH, PT Boats, etc. About 640W from the wall. Using thermal testing programs designed by AMD to test case thermals by working all 4 cores simulateously, I can pull 1000W from the wall. About 800W DC.

Yet this PC can't even boot into Windows with anything less than a 700W and will shut down during Canyon Flight in 3DMark with anything less than an 800W.

"But it's only pulling 800W from the wall."

Now back ON topic... Yes, the OP's system with it's "mere" x1650 does not require much power at all. I can totally agree on that. But we shouldn't use "Kill-A-Watt-used-during-3DMark" number to drive that point home. The fact is, the OP has a cheap power supply. The OP has an OLD power supply. The OP's power supply likely was NEVER capable of 400W to begin with, yet you're telling him "you'll be fine."

He'll be fine with an Earth Watts 380W, sure. He'd be fine with a good FSP 350W even. No problem. But NOT the CompUSA 400W.

 

[dclive]

Sounds logical enough - your PSU pulls 1000W from the wall, and you need at least an 800W PSU, or about 20% less than that.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Now back ON topic... Yes, the OP's system with it's "mere" x1650 does not require much power at all. I can totally agree on that. But we shouldn't use "Kill-A-Watt-used-during-3DMark" number to drive that point home. The fact is, the OP has a cheap power supply. The OP has an OLD power supply. The OP's power supply likely was NEVER capable of 400W to begin with, yet you're telling him "you'll be fine."

He'll be fine with an Earth Watts 380W, sure. He'd be fine with a good FSP 350W even. No problem. But NOT the CompUSA 400W.

I find that highly unlikely given the millions of similar PSUs out and about today, the vast majority running perfectly fine. Fact is most people running 1650s and higher GPUs use cheap OEM PSUs and they're still working just fine.

I see this as essentially a step-up of an OEM PSU. As we've already proven, an OEM PSU (Dell, Acer are 2 examples) at 300W and 350W are fully capable of running an 8800GTS/320 and Quad-core CPU, so to run a quad-core CPU and significantly less stuff and a significantly lower power GPU, with a PSU that's about as good and has more wattage per the maker, strikes me as a win-win scenario.

Are you really saying you think everyone running a 1650 or another add-in GPU is going out to buy another PSU? C'mon!

 

[MarcVenice]

Can't find the review with the bigger discrepancy's, but this should still tell you there's a significant difference between games in terms of power usage. Sometimes there's a cpu bottleneck, sometimes there's a GPU bottleneck. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3183&p=5 If you look at silentpcreviews site you can see what happens to the acoustics when the load get's increased on a PSU.

Besides that, I'm going to let jonnyguru do the arguing. I doubt it's a FACT that most people run a 1650 and higher gpu's with cheap OEM PSU's. If I'm not mistaken, OEM PSU's aren't all that cheap. But jonny will know for sure.

 

[dclive]

That's a bad test, though, Marc, because what you're really testing is whether the SLI-ness of the game can make use of the extra GPUs - some don't, or don't as well, so the GPU doesn't stress the PSU as much or at all. You cannot compare that to a regular system with a single GPU that *would* be used with a game. You're comparing apples to oranges.

You think all those people buying 1650s at retail are also buying a PSU to go with it? C'mon! You are fully aware that the lion's share of machines out there are pre-built by the OEMs (Dell, etc.) and nobody touches them except for the few parts they update, right? I'd bet graphics cards outsell PSUs 10 to 1 at retail, if not by more.

 

[MarcVenice]

Maybe it's a bad test, not to interested in getting technical, like I said, there will be gpu and cpu bottlenecks, different games will draw different kinds of power.

Originally posted by: dclive
You think all those people buying 1650s at retail are also buying a PSU to go with it? C'mon! You are fully aware that the lion's share of machines out there are pre-built by the OEMs (Dell, etc.) and nobody touches them except for the few parts they update, right? I'd bet graphics cards outsell PSUs 10 to 1 at retail, if not by more.

Get some numbers dclive, because I'm calling bullshit. I'd be more inclined to actually believe that people who buy dells and other OEMs NEVER upgrade. Most of them don't know how. Dell's aren't easy to upgrade either. And you are talking 1650's here, what if we're talking 200$ gpu's instead? Don't you think THOSE people buy a new PSU ? It's all to easy to assume that people who think they need a better GPU don't also think need a better PSU, when the box clearly sais: 26a on the 12v rail required.

 

[Gillbot]

All I will say is, jonnyGURU gave me similar upgrade my PSU asap advice when I built my C2D rig. He pleaded with me to upgrade but a few people said I;d be fine so I let it go and used my old PSU. It was a generic 430 watter and guess what, the system booted right up fine and ran for a few days before the PSU went POP! It took out a few other components with it though so why risk a shiny new build over an OLD PSU? It's not worth it, get a better one.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Maybe it's a bad test, not to interested in getting technical, like I said, there will be gpu and cpu bottlenecks, different games will draw different kinds of power.

Originally posted by: dclive
You think all those people buying 1650s at retail are also buying a PSU to go with it? C'mon! You are fully aware that the lion's share of machines out there are pre-built by the OEMs (Dell, etc.) and nobody touches them except for the few parts they update, right? I'd bet graphics cards outsell PSUs 10 to 1 at retail, if not by more.

Get some numbers dclive, because I'm calling bullshit. I'd be more inclined to actually believe that people who buy dells and other OEMs NEVER upgrade. Most of them don't know how. Dell's aren't easy to upgrade either. And you are talking 1650's here, what if we're talking 200$ gpu's instead? Don't you think THOSE people buy a new PSU ? It's all to easy to assume that people who think they need a better GPU don't also think need a better PSU, when the box clearly sais: 26a on the 12v rail required.

You're calling bullshit because you believe people upgrade PSUs like they upgrade GPUs? Oh come on! Until a few years ago you *couldn't* upgrade Dell PSUs (yes, there's an adapter, but most people didn't know where to get it...) - look at BestBuy and Circuit City sometime; they have massive varieties of graphics cards, but do they even sell PSUs? That's retail, and that's your proof....

Dells are trivial to upgrade the GPU - undo the case, slap in the GPU. Did you mean something else here?

For $200 GPUs (8800GT, currently), no, I don't think they all buy new PSUs. Take a look in the slickdeals Inspiron 530 (Quad core $675 with 24" LCD) thread sometime - lots of people asking, and 100% success rates with the stock PSU.