When is a 300watt power supply necessary?

[Spooner]

Here's my system:

P3 733EB slocketed
Asus P3V4X motherboard
128mb pc133 micron RAM
Voodoo3 3000 AGP graphics card
40X Acer cdrom
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live!Value
Adaptec SCSI PCI Card Adapter
3Com PCI Ethernet Card
Plextor 8x external scsi cdr

Do I need a 300 watt power supply or is 250 good enuff?

What's the difference?

 

[konichiwa]

Well the difference is 50Watts

I would recommend a 300W over a 250. In my old system I had a 250 and I just plain ran out of plug thingy's to plug things in to. They're not that expensive...I saw an Antec 300W at OnVia for $40. Go for 300.

 

[konichiwa]

Server fart.

 

[Czar]

You dont realy need a 300w PS, and if you run out of connectors then just buy an Y splitter. If you have many fans then why not get a 300w.

 

[Cable]

Yeah, you really dont need a 300watt ps. I have about the same setup as you, except I have more ram. I had a 250 in there, but I thought it had died, so I purchased another 300ps. But its ok to have a little more power I guess. Hehe

 

[miken]

If you have more than 3 5v peripherals (2 HD's 1 cd-rom) then get a 300w, If you have an old Athlon Classic 750 chipset, get a 300W,otherwise 250 is fine. In fact HP Vectra's use 130W for all Celeron systems i've seen...

 

[AMB]

also, a GeForce drains alot of power

 

[4824guy]

I don't think a 300watt PC is needed in your system. You don't have one of those power sucking Athlons or GeForce cards. I used to have a Compaq PC that only had a 175watt PS that I had a V3-2000, cd-rom, cd-rw, Ultra ATA66 PCI card, and two hard drives and I didn't have any problems with it.

 

[Burnedhardware]

people start needing those 300W power supplies for their 80 (or more) watt peltiers...

 

[Prodigy^]

hehe yeah, you can just buy Y-cables

and a 250 is fine, I'm running about the same with a little moe ram, one more cd drive and two harddrives - on a 230W

 

[Pariah]

You can't make an accurate assessment without knowing how many hard drives you have. If you have 3 or more, definitely go for a 300. Also, keep in mind the quality of the PS is more important than the wattage.

 

[Jhhnn]

The most important question is....How does it work? Having boot problems? Anand and co. did an article awhile back, Their point of view was basically that booting takes the most power, If it boots ok, then it most likely will run ok. If planning upgrades to power hungry components, you might want to include a beefier unit, just to ease your mind.
Might want to check these links: http://www.tdl.com/~netex/cases/ps.html
(high-end stuff)
http://www1.amd.com/athlon/power
(If it's here, it's probably decent)

 

[kat5iv]

i have a crappy deer 250 watt PSU, and it seems to work fine. P-II 400, 5400 rpm maxtor, 120 megs of ram, and a couple PCI cards, cd rom and a burner. ill have another 5400 RPM drive tomarrow. also, fans draw like 12 watts, you have to have more fans than you could stand listening to to make even a difference on the load of the powersupply. i deffinately agree that the quality of the power supply is MUCH more important than the wattage. also rembember, that 250, 300 whatever watts is teh MAX that it can put out, meaning that it will get really hot and ineficent when its max rated load is put on it.
my $.02

- Jason