Question about relationship between mobo and power supply

[Rivergater]

I understand that the new p4 and faster athlon systems demand a 400+watt power supply.

is it the cpus themselves that demand that or is it the mobo/chipset?

 

[bozo1]

It's the processors themselves that need more juice than the old days.

Whether you need 400+ watts entirely depends on what you have in your box. AMD wants 30 amps available on the 5-volt line and a combined 180 watts available on the 5-volt and 3.3 volt lines. Many 300 watt supplies meet those specs and work fine. Power requirements for the current Pentium 4's are much less.

Whether you need 400+ watts depends on how many PCI cards you add, how many drives, fans, etc. Unless you are talking about filling all of your PCI slots, using 4 or more hard drives, a 300 watt supply that meets the criteria I posted above will work fine for a standard system. (2 hard drives, 2 ROM drives, video card, sound card, 2-3 case fans, etc.)

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: bozo1
It's the processors themselves that need more juice than the old days.

Whether you need 400+ watts entirely depends on what you have in your box. AMD wants 30 amps available on the 5-volt line and a combined 180 watts available on the 5-volt and 3.3 volt lines. Many 300 watt supplies meet those specs and work fine. Power requirements for the current Pentium 4's are much less.

Whether you need 400+ watts depends on how many PCI cards you add, how many drives, fans, etc. Unless you are talking about filling all of your PCI slots, using 4 or more hard drives, a 300 watt supply that meets the criteria I posted above will work fine for a standard system. (2 hard drives, 2 ROM drives, video card, sound card, 2-3 case fans, etc.)

Pretty solid info!

I don't think anything *NEEDS* 400W (without a ton of devices, like 8 HD's plus many PCI cards, etc). I've used 300W power supplies for a lot of devices, and use a 350W enermax which can handle everything I throw at it.

 

[ChoppedBroccoli]

Hey guys. I was thinking of using an enermax 330w power supply to power an AMD 2000xp system, w/ a g4 ti4400 (leadtek retail), audigy, wd se 80gb hd, lite-on cdrw and dvd drives, 3 case fans and a Dynatron DC1206BM-L615 High-End Cooler w/ 5300 RPM Fan.

Should this run stable? I don't think I will be overclocking anything.

Specs and images:

Enermax, FS-710B. BLACK, 10-Bay, Enermax 330W P-4 PS, Server Tower Case ATX. 4 X 5.25" Bays, 2 X 3.5" Bays, 4 X 3.5" Hidden. Enermax EG351P VE(2 BB Fans) (AMD Recommended power supply.) 3 Fans installed. Dimensions: W205*D473*H522 (mm).
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