250w enough?
Alrighty, completely idjit question but...
I'm building a machine used solely for playing back video over a wireless network to my home theater out of spare parts.
Will a 250w psu be enough to power a 1600+ and an ATI 9200 AIW?
No CD-Rom, nothing extraneous.
Fold on.
I'm building a machine used solely for playing back video over a wireless network to my home theater out of spare parts.
Will a 250w psu be enough to power a 1600+ and an ATI 9200 AIW?
No CD-Rom, nothing extraneous.
Fold on.
0
Comments
Given no optical drives, 95% sure it will be fine. Even if not best brand. WORST brand, would go to a 300 W and that step is not likely to kill things. Try it, for now. AMD things versus fast Intels. they pull less power, lots less. Optical drives and LOTS of huge fans and HUGE am ounts of RAM would tell me to say a good 300 to not-great 350W instead, due to optical drives. Due to heat, down here where I live, I run obscene amounts of fans compared to folks up north or in UK. Actually, have run a Barton 2500+ system on a 250W antec psu, again no burners, just an old 32X CD-ROM reading drive for optical, but that was a bit of a stretch once I fanned it right for here. For what you have, 250 W should be plenty fine if PSU is worth using and stable.
IF this is just a folding box, definitely hang in with a 250W you have around until thing dies. NOTHING in it should need the real heavy power hogs.
I say yes as well. I would put a decent brand in there tho.
Fold On.
If not burning they take little power. IF they are bruning they pull a decently large amount on 12 V, and on spinup they activate for a short time. During normal use, you are right, adn for readers much less power is used, and drives that are reading take much less power than in burning mode.
At this point I usually get a-- how does THAT relate??? Cheaper 250W PSUs typically tied 12 and 5 and 3.3 in one common pool, bigger ones were more likely to tie the 12 and low voltages less, good PSUs tend to do so less than cheaper ones especially when also of smaller wattage kinds. The Aopen 250W I used was unusually GOOD, inside. The innards were not Aopen brand as to full PSU board inside. It was a Sparkle PSU board and components set, just face relabelled.
One common pool causes this-- overdraw 12, you get underwattaging and\or undervoltaging also of low voltage things especially with a smaller wattage PSU. They have less initial surge capability, in terms of watts, as box starts up. That and the high draw at times (including post) on Opticals is what together led me to include opticals....
you know WAY too much.
Fold on.
I built computers that RAN on 180 W PSUs. OLD FART here, lived through history of PCs, lots of it hands-on. We try, though some of us feel we need to explain the very complex clockworks (to understand that pun, look up Babbage's +calculator on google) of computers. Funny thing, we have a back to the future thing (or is the reverse) starting to happen, with nanomachinery being researched. Maybe Babbage WAS right after all...
Take Habitat For Humanity's server:
ASUS A7N8X
1x512MB PC2100
1800+
GF2MX400/64MB DDR
HighPoint RocketRaid 2ch PCI RAID card
2 WD 400JB 40GB/7200RPM/8MB/ATA-100 HDDs in RAID 1
CD
Floppy
5 SmartFan2 case fans
Ancient 15" HP monitor that draws ~100w by itself.
The entire system draws ~200w according to the APC UPS it's on, so the computer only draws about 100w, and that's while folding @ home is running.
However, what you fail to take into account is:
1- the prescott cpu. I tried running my 2.8E off a 300w Enermax I had sitting around. What do you think the +12v rail dipped to while IDLING IN THE BIOS? (measured with a multimeter). Keep in mind that the PSU had the P4-E, 1GB of ram, an IC7-G, the CPU fan, and a Radeon 7500 to power. That's it. No drives, no nothing.
Try 10.3v. For Prescotts, a high quality 350-400w+ PSU is a necessity.
2- Crappy power supplies. Yes, you're right. Most systems could get by on a 250w PSU, except for one minor issue. Generic 250w PSUs are only likely to be able to put out 100w-200w of power, if that, for any sustained length of time.
I bought a "550w" PSU for $20 (it was on sale; regular price was $30) to use as a bench/test PS. Since it was such a cheap PSU, I wanted to load it up outside of a computer to make sure it wasn't going to die when asked to power my NF7-S or whatever and kill something important.
That power supply lasted for less than 8 seconds at 300w, during which time the +12v rail dropped to 11.2v. 550w my a$$.
If you use good power supplies, a 300w is all you need, unless you're running a prescott or a heavily overclocked high end system with a lot of stuff in it.