8800gt power demands

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

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 :D

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

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 :)

cheers

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

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 :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tlfreddy

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

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screen wouldnt come on :)

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.

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