Is my power supply powerful enough?

[SpeedZealot369]

Can my antec 480w supply enough power to a x1900xt? how about a xt @ xtx speeds and higher?

Thanks.

 

[Amplifier]

Unless you're running a lot of peripherals, it will be enough.

 

[giantpinkbunnyhead]

One thing to check is your 12V rail amps. For an XTX, they recommend at least 30A on it. As far as 480W, that is plenty.

 

[SpeedZealot369]

Thanks guys.

 

[Shortass]

How do you check your 12V rail amps? I have the Antec TruePower 430 and am wondering about an upgrade to an x1900xt but would rather not have to upgrade my PSU on top of the mobo, cpu, and heatsink (2600m nf7-s feeling kind of old )

 

[giantpinkbunnyhead]

Usually there will be a chart or something on the PSU itself that lays the amperages out for each voltage. Look for that. Some PSU's have two 12V rails (12V1 and 12V2). In this case you can add them together then take a bit off. i.e. my PSU has 20A on 12V1 and 20A on 12V2, but when combined it has 34A. Don't know what accounts for the loss but it's there.

If your PSU doesn't have a chart, you might be able to pull up a spec sheet for it online.

 

[thepd7]

Im running x1800xt with fx-57 on an antec 450 watt with 1 hard drive, 1 cdrom. It handles it well, and unless you add more hdds and stuff I know the x1900xt doesn't take >30 watts more than the x1800xt. Should be fine.

Now OCing to XTX is another story, I would upgrade the PSU if you plan on doing that.

 

[BassBomb]

you dont get losses on two rails , youd get less on two than you would on one

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: BassBomb
you dont get losses on two rails , youd get less on two than you would on one

They key is to look at "combined" Amperage. Generally speaking you want over 26A on a high quality PSU (Enermax, OCZ, Antec, etc) or 28A+ for lower quality brands.


For Example, my Enermax 485W Noisetaker has two +12V rails: 18A on +12V1 and 18A on +12V2. However the combined rating is 32A for the two rails. This is written plainly on the PSU, but some manufacturers hide the combined rating and instead only write the individual ratings.

Just remember you can't just add up the voltage rails to get total +12V amperage.

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However, if they give you the total watts on the 12V rail, you can obtain amperage by dividing it by 12. For example, let's say your PSU says the following:

+12V1 17A
+12V2 16A
Total power for +12V rails: 312W

Divide that by 12 to get the amps: 312/12= 26A combined power.

 

[Munky]

Just make sure you have 30A or more on the 12v rail (look at the label on the actual PSU). I'm running a x1900xtx, OC'd Opteron 165, 2x512MB OCZ VX mem (3.3v), 2 optical drives and 2 hard drives on a 420w OCZ PSU with 30A on the 12v rail, and not a single problem.