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Just How Many things can you run off a 300W Power Supply??

It depends on how good of one you have.
Like say an enermax vs a generic.

If you have a decent one you should be able to run lots on it.
 
I have many devices working off of a 300W PSU, check out my rig and that will give you an idea.

Fans: 8 Fans in all (including PSU Fan)

1 120mm (4 Pin)
3 80mm
1 Blue Orb
1 ArtiCooler
1 chipset Cooler (KT7)

 


<< hehe it will croak >>



I can vouch for that. I have a nice 300W Antec PSU running 7 fans, two HDs, CD &amp; CDRW, sound, ethernet, TnT2U, SCSI, and a kitchen sink 🙂P). I tried installing a 72W TEC and it just couldn't take it 🙁

Time for some 450W Enermax luvin 😀
 
My Antec 300w is running what's in my sig...
2x harddrives
1x burner
1x dvd rom
4x 80mm case fans
1x cpu fan
1x Live!Drive IR...

not bad...
 
I'm running an Antec 300w with the following:

5 80mm fans including PS fan
1 60mm fan
4 HDs
1 DVD
1 CDR
1 CD
1 zipdrive
1 floppy

O, this is with a 800 Mhz T-bird btw.
 
I'm running a generic &quot;sparkle&quot; power supply 300W (funny that the ps that came w/my case is the same as my nick) and have lotsa stuff running on it. Check out my rig and see.
 
I can't remember off hand the exact numbers, but I used to know the exact power needed for each component, something like:
PCI cards = 5W each
ISA cards = 3W each
AGP cards = 10W+
CDROM(optical) = 15-20W/doubled on startup(spinup)
HD(mechanical/magnetic) = 20-25W/doubled on startup(spinup)
various fans are around 3-8W each usually
CPU = anyone know?? I'd guess around 10-20W for Intel, 40W+ for AMD

Add all your stuff up, power supplies spike on startup for a few seconds and give their max rated power only for that short time, sometimes even a little more.
Normally, a 300W runs at about 200W-230W once the machine is up and running.
 
Red rooster brings up a very good point, the limit will only be hit during boot and spin up because the drives suck power like crazy. You could get around this by using a fan bus to turn off fans during boot to save a few watts until everything was up and running but you would always run the risk of crashing if a CD-ROM drew to much spinning up after you put in a disc. Be a really bad way to save a couple bucks but it would work... Oh and one thing, all PS's were not created equally. That 83 watt one that toph99 shows it. Dell could get away with an 83 watt PS because they put the power onthe different voltages that the processor and vid card need. That leaves less power for other things but toph99 hasn't ran into that yet. My advice, get an enermax. It's a quality supply (The 276 watt will beat a generic 300 watt) not a bad price and the dual fan versions help with cooling.
 
Try multiplying the amps listed on each item time the voltage to get the watts used for each device, add it up to get your total. You might not be able to find some specs on the mobo for instance, but most other parts have their current ratings somewhere on them. Some parts use multiple voltages so you have to add up the totals. 300 watts goes pretty far, I would say to try not to load a PS past 80% of it's rated output to lengthen it's useable lifetime though.

Example: if a fan says 12 v (volts)and 0.15 a (amps), 12 x 0.15 = 1.8 watts

Good luck!
 
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