psu - is 300w enough for me?

[xSauronx]

ok, had a generic psu, worked fine for months under normal operations, gave no problems when i ran a sandra burn in, but the other night it didst pop and smoke

so, im looking for another one, brand name this time

my box is in my sig, so will a 300watt be enough, or should i get a 350-400w psu?

any info i could use to make the decision myself later in the future would also be welcome, thanks everyone

 

[Lord Evermore]

There've been many threads just in the last few weeks about power supplies. It's a regular thing here.

A good quality 300W should be plenty for your needs, but a 350W might give you a little wiggle room. Any AMD rated PSU will be sufficient for the processor, so don't worry about cries that such a fast CPU needs more power.

 

[Dufman]

it depends what stuff you have in your box

if you have 3 7200rpm harddrives, a power hungry proc, a big video card, and other stuff like that, you should get a high quality (antec, enermax) power supply. 350+ watts, just to make sure, becasue even some "high" quality power supplies dont live up to their rated wattage before blowing.

 

[Lord Evermore]

He's got his rig in his link. Two hard drives (one being like 2.5GB), two optical drives, an Athlon at just under 1.8GHz. That's not an excessive load for a good 300W PSU, but 350W gives some assurance. GOOD PSU's don't need to be 400W to power a nice system.

 

[SuperSix]

300w is more than enough for your current rig, but I would get a 400w+ for future upgrade possibilities..

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: SuperSix
300w is more than enough for your current rig, but I would get a 400w+ for future upgrade possibilities..

vroom vroom ..faster,bigger,more ...uh....hope my g/f doesn't read this..oops

 

[hdeck]

it really depends on the quality of your power supply. i'm running a 1600+ with 2 harddrives (40 gig and 100 gig), dvd drive, and cd-rw on my 350 and haven't had any problems.

 

[xSauronx]

wont be making anymore upgrades, may eventually change out my cd-rom for a dvd player, but thats it, ill never take advantage of the onboard raid my mobo has, and since my smaller drive died, ill likely get a 7200rpm to replace my main drive, and stuff all my mp3's and the like onto cd-r's

anyway, i appreciate the input, think newegg had a enermax 300w for about 40 shipped, thanks guys

 

[Paulson]

I've got 3 7200rpm hard drives, 2 optical drives (burner and dvd), a sound blaster audigy platinum, 2 case fans, a voodoo 3 2000 (lol), a nic card, promise ata controller, athlon 1.4ghz processor and some other goodies, and I'm running an enlight 300watt ps...

everything works without a hitch, but I'd probably possibly be looking at problems with a better video card.. who knows... works fine for everything I have in it!