Required System Power

[jasper]

I plan to run a machine with the following spec with a 380W power supply.

Is 380W enough to run OK and what is the method of determining what power rating of a supply is necessary please?

GCS-XR385H512
Sapphire 512Mb Radeon HD 3850 PCI-Express 2 VGA Card

CPA-AP2720
AMD Phenom II X3 720 Socket AM3 Tripple-Core Processor - Ret

MEC-D3-4096T169
Corsair TwinX 4Gb DDR3 1600 (2x2Gb) CAS9 DHX Module

MBG-MA79XTUD4P
GigaByte MA790XT-UD4P AM3,DDR3,CFire,SATA2,GBLan,ATX

[Sputnik]

You need to give more info, Will you be overclocking, How many HDD's, Optical drives, Fans, Extra PCI cards etc. etc.

And even then it depends on the make of the PSU in question. Keep in mind that a cheap 380W PSU will never be able to supply 380W and will have gone bang long before it got close to it.

[Blitzen]

If its a decent 380W then it will handles things without a hitch.

Wont have much head room for upgrading though.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If its a decent 380W then it will handles things without a hitch.

Wont have much head room for upgrading though.

Also I would not try overclocking the CPU too!!

I would at least go for a decent 400w PSU as a bare minimum. If you want to save a few watts I would go for a 780G motherboard and an HD4670 graphics card instead of the 790GX and HD3850.

[jasper]

Well I would also have '750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 7200rpm 32Mb SATAII Hard Drive' and that would pretty much be it.

I probably wouldn't overclock but will take your advice and go for 500W which should give me a bit more scope.


I looked at the HD 4670 as well. As well as the lower power rating would it's spec compare well against the HD 3850 ?

[Leggie]

I've used this online calculator in the past to work out my power supply needs.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The minimum PSU I would go for would be this Silverpower 400w:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400w-...2V-6Serial-ATA

[xirokx]

definately not...

I would not go for a low end psu if you are powering high spec components because if the psu dies it will definately take an expensive component with it...

if anything spend £60 - £70 on a decent SCAN listed PSU...

[sadbuttrue]

As above, the wattage is less important than the quality. I'm currently pushing 320 watts at full cpu & gfx load through a 4 year old Seasonic 430watt PSU. It barely breaks a sweat.