PCA Forums

I was making a Ghost image of my win2k rig in the garage, when I noticed how much stuff I have in this rig:

Dually mobo with 2 slot 1 cpus @700MHz
4 sticks of ram @768 megs
3½ floppy drive
SCSI Zip drive
SCSI Plextor burner
SCSI DvD Reader
IDE DvD burner
IDE Lite-On CD burner
SCSI boot HD
IDE HD
IDE HD

misc - voodoo 3 video card, pci IDE ATA100 card, nic, and finally an old Sound Blaster sound card.

Am I stressing this 300w power supply with all this stuff?

If it's a decent PS, not at all.

Aweful lot of drives, and 2 CPUs but it's also a slot 1 which is not so fussy about voltage regulation as modern systems.

If this is a mission critical rig, though, I would recommend a beefier PSU.

you can use this guys calculator and figure it out.

Power Supply Calculator

Not a mission critical rig - it's a spare "test bed" rig that I've had for ~4 years now running win2k. According to the calculator from smb's link, it's using ~265 watts. Thanks for that link.

My old system ran 2 SCSI HDDs, a cd-rom burner and DVD drive PLUS my present power hungry videocard with an older 300W PSU (used since the C300a days) and never had any noticable problems. I think you'll be OK but if not, you'll know soon enough.

Power consumption for PCs

Hey guys,

I just finished a big mechanical engineering job for my father. In it I determined the necessary cooling for a large buildings with a large number of rooms. The people who were reno-ing the building wanted to put people into four old gyms and lower the ceiling using T-bar. I looked up the power consumption for a PC on the net, and found a figure of 720 watts. This seemed rather much for me, so I scaled it back to 300 for my estimates. Did I make a mistake? Should this figure be higher? How many watts are used by CRTs compared to LCDs? If the PSU gives 400 W, what is its consumption? Because it gives off heat, and is capable of delivering 400 W, it must be using more than 400, right? What is an average PSU wattage rating (like for mass produced Dell types)? What is the average use of the PSU? (they aren't going to be burning CDs, formatting drives, backing up onto tape etc, and stressing the CPU at the same time, so they aren't maxed out, right?) Also, would water-cooling save on the heat output of these PCs? My bro says that you can put your water tanks outside, in a big tank. For some reason I think he is pulling my leg. It would be very cool though…

Thanks for the help,

Yes,you are asking a lot from your power supply.
300-W is kinda asking for trouble.I hope things keep 'glued' for now Hope you can find a better P/S soon.
Bill

Many OEM systems use 300 watt PSUs (even smaller on cheapo budget systems), but an OEM system also uses a controlled number of devices and the manufacturer knows from testing what the power requirements are. OEM systems also cut corners to save money (one of the reasons you really should add extra drives and devices to cheap OEM systems - they're just not rated for it).

If you're building a gaming system, or you intend to have more than just 1 HDD and 1 CD-Rom drive, then AT A MINIMUM you need a GOOD QUALITY 350 watt PSU.

No you may not actually be using that much power BUT having spare capacity means that your PSU is never stressing it's components. You never want to push your PSU to the limits of it's capacity - this causes voltage instability.

Considering how much power modern video cards draw, and the popularity of RAID arrays, I'd really recommend a 400 - 450 watts for a serious gaming system.

I personally would only use Antec's True Power line of PSUs, but that's my preference because I purchase a lot of them (for myself and my clients) and have never had a problem. They're also VERY quiet.

I have had problems with a variety of other PSUs. Whatever you do, STICK TO A NAME BRAND and read reviews on it. You should pick a PSU as carefully as you select a motherboard.

All PSUs are NOT created equal. DO NOT try to save money by buying an inexpensive PSU even though it may have a high power rating. Modern mobos and CPUs require VERY stable voltage regulation and cheap PSUs use cheap components. Cheap components = voltage instability. Yeah it may work, then again you may be cursed with occasional glitches, crashes, lockups, video anomalies, etc and NEVER be 100% certain if it's your PSU or not. For an extra $20 - $30 do yourself a BIG favor and spend the money on a quality PSU.