Question about this power supply

[Sogetsu]

Is the Antec Earthwatts 500watts power supply enough to power the E8600 core2 duo processor, Asus p5qc motherboard, EVGA GTX280, 8 gb of ram, and 2 hdds together? (http://www.techaddicts.net/rev...a500w/ant_ea500w.html)

 

[dualsmp]

500w is plenty even if you overclock both the video card and processor.

 

[Sogetsu]

Thanks for the quick reply! Is 500 watt overdoing it by too much? I plan on leaving the computer on all the time. Would a 400 or 450 watt suffice?

 

[dualsmp]

The power rating whether 300w, 500w, 750w etc.. doesn't mean it draws that much power at a constant rate. Your PSU only draws as much power as necessary. Meaning if your computer only needs 100 watts at idle, the PSU only delivers 100w whether the power supply is rated 750w or 300w. If you have a situation where under maximum load you exceed the power rating of the PSU, you would have to go to a bigger PSU. At maximum load a 500w PSU will be fine for the components you have.

 

[Sogetsu]

Thank you so much you've been extremely helpful!

 

[Lunyone]

The Antec EW 500w PSU will do fine. Just remember that some, if not all, of the GTX 280's need to have a 6 pin and a 8 pin PCI-e power connectors to run correctly. I believe there is an adaptor to convert from 2 x 4 pin or 2 x 6 pin power connectors to 1 x 8 pin PCI-e power connectors.