300 Watts Powersupply for Athlon64 + Radeon 9800Pro?

I already own a computer case with a *generic* 300W power supply.
When I upgrade my PC with the parts I listed above, will the 300-Watt
power supply suffice? Or would that be a very bad idea?

I just bought a Thermaltake 410W PS from NewEgg this past summer and I
highly recommend their products. I also have one of their CPU fans and an
extra case fan.

My standard 300W PS in my Inwin case (Powerman, IIRMC) just wasn't cutting
it anymore. My system would reboot out of the blue, especially in
processor-intensive situations. I had seen and heard enough horror stories
to make the upgrade and get a decent PS. Been stable ever since.

My 2¢,

f_f

And don't forget a good surge protector, and if you can afford it, a UPS by
APC or other good brand. So many flakey computer problems are caused by
degradation of electronic components due to power spikes and fluctuations.

JK

"faster_framerates" wrote in message
...
I already own a computer case with a *generic* 300W power supply.
When I upgrade my PC with the parts I listed above, will the 300-Watt
power supply suffice? Or would that be a very bad idea?

I just bought a Thermaltake 410W PS from NewEgg this past summer and I
highly recommend their products. I also have one of their CPU fans and an
extra case fan.

My standard 300W PS in my Inwin case (Powerman, IIRMC) just wasn't cutting
it anymore. My system would reboot out of the blue, especially in
processor-intensive situations. I had seen and heard enough horror stories
to make the upgrade and get a decent PS. Been stable ever since.

My 2¢,

f_f

In article ,
lid says...
NEVER trust the advice of a salesman! They are paid to sell, so always make
independent enquiries! She may however be right, but the only way to find
out is to try it with the 300w PSU and replace it if need be.

As opposed to asking complete strangers here on USENET?
(j/k... kinda)

To answer the O.P., getting a new power supply from a
reputable vendor (Zalman, Antec, and a few others) is
always a good idea. Especially if you get one with the
side intake fan to help pull heat away from the CPU area
and out the back of the unit.

"DalienX" wrote in message ...

since your spending all that money why not spend the extra 60 - 100
dollars and get a nice new case and power supply, then you wont have
anything to worry about.



Because for that extra 60-100 dollars, I could've just gone with an
Athlon 64 3400+ instead of Athlon 64 3000+. So I just want to be
really, really sure that I'd need a 350 Power Supply before I buy one.
Especially since my system doesn't have all that many components (no
floppies, zip drives, and not secondary CD Drives or secondary Hard
drives)

300 "generic" watts is actually far less than 300 watts into a real world
load at the computer's operating temperature. Time to upgrade your PSU.

--
DaveW



"Opticreep" wrote in message
om...
I'm building a gaming computer with the following parts:

Athlon 64 3000+ CPU
Socket 754 Motherboard
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card
1 GB DDR RAM
80 GB Hard Drive
DVD/CDROM Drive
Audigy 2 ZS

plus the CPU fan, motherboard fan, the the fan for the power supply.


I already own a computer case with a *generic* 300W power supply.
When I upgrade my PC with the parts I listed above, will the 300-Watt
power supply suffice? Or would that be a very bad idea?

The saleslady at the PC store I visited insisted that I'll need a
350-Watt power supply to go with all the other things I bought. I
told her I already had a 300-Watt power supply at home.

I wouldn't take the chance on a generic power supply to run the system
you're building. I'm running an AMD64 3200+ system, and just the RAM is
worth over twice as much as the Antec TruPower 430W ps I installed.

With the first snowfall of this year, we've had power surges, brown outs,
and hours of full outages over the past 3 days. The CyberPower UPS has done
it's job admirably, providing backup power and running the computer through
the shutdown sequence when needed. I'll never go without one.

Fitz

Toshi1873 looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

In article ,
says...
NEVER trust the advice of a salesman! They are paid to sell, so always make
independent enquiries! She may however be right, but the only way to find
out is to try it with the 300w PSU and replace it if need be.

As opposed to asking complete strangers here on USENET?
(j/k... kinda)

The difference is that random strangers on Usenet aren't getting a
commission for convincing you that you need product X, the salesperson
is/might be.

Salespeople can and do lie to sell products, for the simple reason that
they don't make any money if they don't sell things.

That's the big downside of having salespeople on commission only.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr

Salespeople can and do lie to sell products, for the simple reason that
they don't make any money if they don't sell things.

My favourite lately is when they try to sell you expensive
precision-machined cables and conenctors for digital TV/radio receivers,
when half the point of digital receivers is you don't need such a great
signal for them to work properly.

Tom McEwan wrote:

Salespeople can and do lie to sell products, for the simple reason that
they don't make any money if they don't sell things.


My favourite lately is when they try to sell you expensive
precision-machined cables and conenctors for digital TV/radio receivers,
when half the point of digital receivers is you don't need such a great
signal for them to work properly.

Yes you do. If the digital signal goes haywire you'll get nothing - with
an analog at least you'll get a noisy signal approximating the original.
Sky digital is a bloody nightmare if a drop of water gets in the LNB or
the weather conditions are truly awful : whole box just freezes. Give me
analog anyday.

(Opticreep) wrote in message . com...

I'm building a gaming computer with the following parts:

Athlon 64 3000+ CPU
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card
80 GB Hard Drive
DVD/CDROM Drive

I already own a computer case with a *generic* 300W power supply.

The saleslady at the PC store I visited insisted that I'll need a
350-Watt power supply to go with all the other things I bought. I
told her I already had a 300-Watt power supply at home.

1. What brand is your generic? You can find the manufacturer by
taking the UL ("RU" symbol) or CSA registration numbers from the label
and going to www.ul.com and www.csa.com to look them up. The UL
number is Exxxxxx, the CSA number Lxxxxxx.

2. What brand does the saleslady want you to buy?

http://takaman.jp has the best power needs estimator I've seen, and
unlike most others it gives not just the total wattage but also the
amps needed from each voltage rail. For a system similar to yours,
only with a Radeon 9700 (no 9800 listed), it says you need about 256W:
14.3A @ +5V, 13.8V @ +12V, and 2.4A @ +3.3V. However, I've found
that this estimator grossly understates the +3.3V needs, often by a
factor of three, whether the mobo uses the 4-pin ATX12V connector or
not. C'T magazine measured 8.6-12A @ +3.3V for XP2400+ systems
equipped with NVidia Ti500 graphics cards, and even my 1.6 GHz AMD
Duron measured about 5A. So compensate for Takaman's error by adding
about 30W to the power total.

I strongly agree with what others have said about claimed ratings
being inaccurate because I had the world's worst 250W PSU (PC Power &
Cooling used the 300W version as an example of how bad a PSU could
be), and it wouldn't run a 1.3 GHz Duron and low-power graphics card
(nothing else) for more than thirty seconds at a time, although it was
able to run a 1.7 GHz Celeron with the same graphics and a CD-ROM and
5400 RPM HD. OTOH one person said that his 250W Fortron/Sparkle (top
quality brand) ran something like an XP2400+ Athlon with fairly fast
graphics card, CD burner, DVD drive (can't remember if it was a
burner), and 1-2 7200 RPM HDs.