Power Supply Wattage Needed

[jiggavo]

I'm almost done with building my pc, but I'm afraid to overlook the PSU. I'm not sure how much I need for my current setup. The basic setup (give or take mods e.g. lights & case fans) are:

kr7a-raid
xp 2100+
512mb crucial 2100
1 20gig hd
2 80gig hd
geforce4 ti4600
3-5 pci cards

I was looking at the sparkle 400, but I'm thinking that it's going to be "just enough". So I'm now looking at maybe an Antec True 480 or an Enermax. What are your suggestions?

 

[ThisIsMatt]

I love sparkles, I have a 350 right now, just upgraded from a 235W Sparkle that was running:

1.4ghz Tbird (higher wattage than any other AMD, even your XP)
512MB PC133 (2 x 256 dimms)
80gig D540X
40gig D740X
cdrom
cdrw
dvd
floppy
2 x 80mm fans
gf2 gts
modem
nic
sblive+5.1
zip 100

The 235W was running all of that for over a week 24/7. No crashes, nothin...

I think you would be just fine with the Sparkle 400. However, you might be turned off by the fan noise. My 350 had a high cfm NMB fan that was pretty loud, I swapped it out for NMB's lowest dBA 80mm fan

 

[jiggavo]

Thanks for the reply Matt. Yeah my friend had a 400 watt and was pretty loud, he swapped the fans out with the panaflo and are dead silent. He hasn't had any instabilities for a good month now, so I might get one of those then. Thanks!