Will my Antec TruePower 380Watt ATX12V Power Supply handle this upgrade?

[Wekiva]

Here is my current system which runs fine with my Antec TruePower 380Watt ATX12V Power Supply:

CPU: Intel P4 3200MHz

Motherboard: Asus P4P800

Memory: 2048 MB of G-Skill PC-3200

Video Card: ATI Radeon X850XT

Hard Drive: Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74.0 GB @ 10000 RPMS

Additional Hard Drives: Maxtor 160GB @ 7200RPMS
Hitachi 250GB @ 7200RPMS

DVD R/W: Pioneer DVR 108

Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

***************************************************

I just sold some of my components and am upgrading. I have just ordered the following:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz LGA 775

Motherboard: DFI INFINITY 975X Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel

Memory: G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100168L Radeon X1900XT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 CrossFire


My budget is pretty much spent and now I'm wondering if my Antec TruePower 380Watt ATX12V Power Supply can handle the upgrade. I know the watts are a bit low but I've always heard that Antec power supplies (especially the TruePower supplies) can handle more than meets the eye. Is there any way to know other than putting it together and waiting for a failure?

Thanks for the help.

 

[GalvanizedYankee]

The PSU is the single most important componet in a PC case and you discount it to the
point of an after thought.

The Antec 380 TP is one of the best SMPSs ever offered...Run it. *shudders*


...Galvanized

 

[BladeVenom]

You should have said if you were overclocking. Here's a power supply calculator. http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp Not sure how good it is, since I just found it, and don't remember the last one I used.

Made a quick run through, guessing at some things, and came out to 359 watts. You might want to double check. They recommend adding 20% if you are going to be using a power supply for more than a year. That came out to 431.

 

[Wekiva]

Originally posted by: GalvanizedYankee
The PSU is the single most important componet in a PC case and you discount it to the
point of an after thought.

The Antec 380 TP is one of the best SMPSs ever offered...Run it. *shudders*


...Galvanized

Well...not quite an afterthought. I do remember when I had the system built 18 months ago and we put in that power supply that it was a good one. That is why I was a little slow on realizing I may need to upgrade. We had planned on building in upgrade capacity and so I thought I'd have at least one good upgrade in it. But this turned into a bigger upgrade than I may have forseen and so now I'm looking into it as well.

An afterthought would be me putting the thing together and taking it to a LAN party and then finding out I don't have enough juice to play and then saying "I'd better get a bigger PS".

As for overclocking...not sure. I'm not one to usually overclock. Although I can't guarantee it won't be tried. But if at a non overclocked setting I'm ok on power and if I overclock I'll probably exceed then the answer to overclocking will be no until I get a bigger PS.

 

[BladeVenom]

There's also video card power supplies. I know Thermal Take and Fortron both make an add on PSU that fits in a 5.25" drive bay just to power video cards. I've never tried one, but it's something worth considering.

 

[pkme2]

Protect your system.
Get a Seasonic S12 600W or Enermax Liberty 620W. If you upgrade, you got your power supply already.

 

[Ike0069]

Personally, I would not use it. I used that PSU with my 6800GT and it was fine, but there's quite a difference between a 6800GT (or an X850XT) and an X1900XT.

It might be OK for awhile, but you'll have that PSU at a continous high load whenever you are gaming and I'm not sure your Antec will like that for very long.

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: Ike0069
Personally, I would not use it. I used that PSU with my 6800GT and it was fine, but there's quite a difference between a 6800GT (or an X850XT) and an X1900XT.

It might be OK for awhile, but you'll have that PSU at a continous high load whenever you are gaming and I'm not sure your Antec will like that for very long.

rofl

my brother did the same thing as op, weaker psu for a 7800GT, Pentium D rig?

the system killed like 4 weak PSU's. I couldn't convince him until he was convinced himself that PSU's that can't handle a system will get killed or kill the entire system, most likely the mobo if ur really careless.

destroyed an AGP mobo back when AGP8x was still shining like a super star. I was really not happy, all thanks to a PSU that came with one of my cheap towers.

solution: upgrade to dual 12v and 550+ watts, should be fine for any additional upgrades.

 

[Varun]

Yes you are upping the power requirements of the video card a lot, but you are definately compensating with the CPU which is better than the P4 power wise.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2679&p=15

This link shows the power draw of an A64 FX57 + X1900XT drawing 312W from the wall at full load. Using around an 80% efficiency of the PSU would mean the PSU is delivering about 250W. As long as you are not going crazy with extra components you should be good, especially since the Core 2 Duo is such a good CPU.

 

[Captante]

While it might work ok for awhile, I'd say you are pushing your luck with that Antec 380 watt unit, especially when you factor in a (roughly) 20% drop-off in supplied wattage based on its age which means its really a +/- 300 watt psu now.

Further if it does fail while under heavy load, theres a fairly good chance it'll take some of your expensive components along with it so I'd say its just not worth the risk when for about $75-$90 you can grab a decent 450-500 watt replacement unit that you know will be ok.

This Silverstone would be a very good choice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817256001


So would this Enermax

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103457


Even this $55 Hiper model would be better then what you have:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817128005