Is this power supply good enough for a GT?

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
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I have a 400W power supply made by some company called Future Power and I don't know if it is good enough for the Geforce 6800 GT I want to buy. This PSU came with my computer; I got the original setup from hypersonic three years ago, back when their prices were good, and this was the best one they had listed but I cannot find much information on it now. This is the only review I could find but the page seems to have gotten cut off halfway through. This site is selling it and says that the company is out of business, so maybe that's why it is so hard to find anything on it.

The current ratings on the PSU's sticker are 15A at +3.3V, 30A at +5V and 15A at +12V. The BIOS reports 3.33V for the 3.3V line, 4.86V for the 5V, 12.16V for the 12V and 1.664V for the cpu. The 3.3V one occasionally changes by +/-0.01 while the rest are all pretty much constant. I have no idea if these readings mean anything for my purposes though.

This is what I have right now and I haven't run into any power problems:
Athlon xp 3200 with stock cooler at 1.65V (recently found a retail one for $90 at a local clearance sale, so I went for that instead of a mobile)
Asus A7N8X motherboard
1024MB PC3200 3-3-3-8 memory at 2.6V (two generic 256mb's and one corsair 512mb, running in dual channel)
Geforce 3 (original 64MB 200/460mhz version, slight overclock to 225/475)
Maxtor 200GB 7200rpm PATA drive
Samsung 52x CD drive
Plextor 16/10/40x CDR drive
SBlive 5.1 soundcard
generic floppy drive

So can I replace the GF3 with a 6800GT and still have everything run stably? What about overclocking bottlenecks due to the PSU? If it will work, which "group" of power cables should I be plugging it into? Currently the hard disk, floppy drive and a side fan are on one group of wires while the two CD drives are on the other group. If not, can you give some recommendations on a new power supply (might as well buy something a bit future-proof in this case)?
 

fireontheway

Golden Member
Jul 8, 2003
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just buy the GT and enjoy then get a bigger psu if your current one fails to get the job done.btw i am running a GT with an old 300W psu(antec) with no problem at stock speeds. i havent tried OC'ing the card yet no because of the psu but i just dont have the need for it atm.
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
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762
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but if it is not powerful enough, is there any danger of it permanently damaging itself or other hardware?
 

Cattlegod

Diamond Member
May 22, 2001
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Originally posted by: CP5670
but if it is not powerful enough, is there any danger of it permanently damaging itself or other hardware?

your computer will just reboot at random.
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
5,660
762
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okay that's good to know. Which power line (groups of wires from the PSU) should the video card go into? I remember reading something about the 6800 Ultra requiring one line all to itself for one of its connectors but I don't know if that applies to the GT.
 

anthrax

Senior member
Feb 8, 2000
695
3
81
LoL, My winfast 6800GT runs fine on my shuttle 200W PSU. I wouldn't worry too much...