Power supply for Duron/Athlon system?

[smurfninja]

I plan to upgrade to a new mobo/AMD cpu and heard somewhere I need to use a 300w power supply. Is that true? I will be OC'ing it slightly, but would like to keep my current minitower case/250w power supply if possible.

 

[DaddyG]

Check out AMD's website for the list of approved PS's. Some 250's are on the list, you could always try yours and replace it, if your system fails to boot or is unstable.

 

[office boy]

I agree. Try it and then worry.

 

[Rand]

Check AMD's list of Athlon approved PS's. If you intend on using one of the higher clocked Athlon's make sure you get at least a 300W PS.

 

[Noriaki]

I used a Generic non-approved 250watt on my big power thirsty 550 .25um classic, and it was fine.

Check the list, there are even some 235Watt or 250Watts available. The list will tell you how high that PSU is certified for.

It has more to do with the quality of the PSU than the actually wattage rating. If you have a good quality 250Watt PSU that puts out a good clean 130watts on the +3.3/+5 combined, and a crappy POS 300watt that cant' make 90watts on teh +3.3/+5 then the 250 watt would be a better choice. (this is just an example....damn near any 300Watt will be fine..but it is more quality than size)

 

[John]

Pick you up a nice Enermax psu 🙂

 

[madthumbs]

Quality is more important. You want a good stable power supply. I had one that was so bad you could hear the fan speeds changing. What shocked me was that the Athlon was still running during the changes. I did get black lockout screens once in a while though. Anyway some Enermax are good, I think Sparkle may be the best. Athlons can run off 200Watts, it should be more dependant on what you want to do with the Athlon. I have 350W because I have 5 drives, 5 fans, and 5 cards.