Quick PSU requirements question

[Spike]

I'm building an office desktop for my church using an Athlon II X2 2.8ghz (Regor), Gigabyte 785G, 1 160gb hdd, 1 DVD drive, 4GB DDR2. I'm placing this in an old case I have sitting around with an Allied 350 watt in it and I wanted to confirm it would have enough juice.

Here is a link to the PSU and from the side it claims 10A on 12v1 and 13A on 12v2. Based on the low TDP of the CPU I hope this is enough. If not I have an OCZ 400w I can throw in there but that is my current test PSU.

Thanks!

 

[theAnimal]

Go with the OCZ for quality reasons.

 

[Spike]

Dang... didn't want to give that up but I guess I could.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, FWIW, I hooked up a friend of mine with an upgrade.

From:
P4 2.8Ghz (478)
2GB DDR2
Via P4M900 mobo
350W PSU included with a Dynex (BestBuy) case

To:
AMD 4050e (IIRC, I don't remember the exact model offhand, it was $40 at NewEgg) 2.3Ghz dual-core 65nm
2x2GB DDR2
ASrock 780G mobo with 128MB of SidePort memory
450W Xion PSU included with a Xion case.

Now, after doing the upgrade, I noticed that the 350W PSU actually weighed more than the 450W PSU. Probably a bad sign.

But anyways, the system works (non-overclocked), using the onboard graphics. If he upgrades to a discrete video card, I'll upgrade his PSU again to something with a PCI-E power plug on it.

I think that 350W PSU was also an Allied. So I think that tentatively, it would work. Not the greatest PSU, but it should work.

I should say that when he had the P4 with the 350W Allied PSU, we tried overclocking his P4 chip from 2.8 to 3.2. It worked for about six months, and then he started to get crashing, etc., so we downclocked it back to stock. Then it seemed to work alright again. So that 350W didn't have much if any extra headroom.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Well, FWIW, I hooked up a friend of mine with an upgrade.

From:
P4 2.8Ghz (478)
2GB DDR2
Via P4M900 mobo
350W PSU included with a Dynex (BestBuy) case

To:
AMD 4050e (IIRC, I don't remember the exact model offhand, it was $40 at NewEgg) 2.3Ghz dual-core 65nm
2x2GB DDR2
ASrock 780G mobo with 128MB of SidePort memory
450W Xion PSU included with a Xion case.

Now, after doing the upgrade, I noticed that the 350W PSU actually weighed more than the 450W PSU. Probably a bad sign.

But anyways, the system works (non-overclocked), using the onboard graphics. If he upgrades to a discrete video card, I'll upgrade his PSU again to something with a PCI-E power plug on it.

I think that 350W PSU was also an Allied. So I think that tentatively, it would work. Not the greatest PSU, but it should work.

I should say that when he had the P4 with the 350W Allied PSU, we tried overclocking his P4 chip from 2.8 to 3.2. It worked for about six months, and then he started to get crashing, etc., so we downclocked it back to stock. Then it seemed to work alright again. So that 350W didn't have much if any extra headroom.

Thats the same PSU I have since mine also came in a dynex case from best buy (probably the same deal since I know I got mine through anandtech). I did a little more looking and I'm pretty sure it will work just fine. This PC will never have discreet graphics so apart from the PSU there are no heavy power draws.