8800gt power demands

[tlfreddy]

Hi all, this is my first ever post!! exciting times...

I hope you guys can help me. I have bought a Packardbell ixtreme x2711 which has :

Q6600
2gb ddr2 533mhz ram
sanfancisco2 motherboard (no i hav'nt heard of it either)
320gb seagate baraccuda hdd
8500gt
FSP group 250-60HEN PSU output from 3.3-12V

and I want to ugrade the graphics to a bfg 8800gt oc. I'm worried about the power supply. At 3dguru they ran a test and a similar system only used 205 watts, but i'm not sure if i trust it.
Should I fork out for a new PSU at the same time or is it safe to try the card on a under-rated psu (IE will it just run slowly or not at all.

Cheers

[staffsMike]

FSP certainly make decent PSU's. Dell run GTX's on 300 - 350w I think ,so It may well do it.. I personally wouldn't but wants the harm in trying eh

[tlfreddy]

what would happen if i did try? big bang and alot of smoke. Or a slug like pc?

[staffsMike]

As a quality PSU it should simply not post and shouldn't blow up..but I couldn't say for sure.

To be honest i'd take the dive and spend £40ish on a corsair VX 450w psu.

Its very good quality and silent to

[tlfreddy]

cheers

[aidanjt]

Indeedy, any high quality PSU that peaks at 350W will do the job more than fine, 450W will give you plenty of headroom.

[MD]

just make sure that you take the PSU out of the PC now and check its size first - it may be a custom PSU for the case you have and therefore something like a corsair wouldn't fit.

Recently built a system for a friend with a 550W corsair unit on a 6750 with a 8800GT and 4GB of ram - runs lovely - inc crysis demo

[moogle]

what would happen if i did try? big bang and alot of smoke. Or a slug like pc?

screen wouldnt come on

[DanceswithUnix]

You seem to be going from a 27W graphics card to a 105W card so that is quite a jump.

I would also vote with getting a new PSU.

[Asulc]

I put my vote in for at least 400 watts, 450 to be safe.