HP N40L Microserver PSU....

[PowerPie5000]

I've just bought a HP N40L Microserver to mainly use as a HTPC (it was a bargain at £130!)... I've heard about people using Radeon 5450 GPU's with these, but i went out and bought a Sapphire Radeon 6450 (1GB DDR3 version). The Microserver comes with a 150W PSU and the PCIe slot is rated at 25W... Will the Radeon 6450 be ok? As far as i can tell the GDDR5 versions have a TDP between 27-31W whilst the DDR3 versions have a TDP between 18-20W but i'm not sure how accurate this info is?

The server uses an AMD Turion II N40L Neo CPU (1.5Ghz dual core - low 15W TDP), a single 1TB SATA HDD, 4GB of DDR3 ram and an LG SATA Blu-ray drive. I'm pretty certain the 150W PSU should be ok although AMD recommend a 400W PSU for the Radeon 6450 which i think is insane for such a low end (and passively cooled) card!

Does anyone else here have any opinions/advice? Also is anyone else here using a Microserver (N36L or N40L) with a dedicated GPU?

[Bambooz]

The HD6450 w. DDR3 is rated as 18W max. The DDR5 version is 27W max.

http://pc-erfahrung.de/grafikkarte/v...rangliste.html

^ Rank 98 and 93. The right-most colums (labelled "Strom") are the power consumtion in watt (max. and idle.)

Shouldn't be a problem. The 400W PSU recommendation is just BS.. lol

PS: damn good deal considering the specs. Beats the hell out of any Intel Atom crap you'd normally get for that price

PS V2: It looks like it's using a Flex-ATX standard PSU (link is just an example) so in theory, you could upgrade it..

edit: some more example PSU's.. 250W 80+ Bronze Seasonic and a 300W 80+ Bronze Seventeam. Considering both have 18A on the 12V rail, the Seasonic would be a better deal.

[DDY]

Forget about how big the PSU is, 150W is plenty. Most importantly the PCIe slot in the HP Microserver is limited to 25W of power which is why the HD 5450, a sub 25W card is a popular with the HP MS.

The 6450 DDR3 should be fine in terms of power consumption.

[PowerPie5000]

Cheers for the replies.... The 150W PSU seems to handle things just fine and Blu-ray playback is perfect! The only problem i have is with the wireless keyboard & mouse! The mouse cursor stutters a bit and sometimes the keyboard doesn't pick up the keys i'm pressing. It could be interference or just cheap rubbish!

[PowerPie5000]

Bought a new wireless keyboard and mouse (Gigabyte) and now works fine

... I have noticed a slight buzz coming from the PSU though! Might have to give HP a call.

[Fubarsteam]

Cool - I'm thinking of buying one of these - glad to see I've somewhere to ask questions...