Prebuilt PC PSU

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Tgeer276

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Sep 3, 2015
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Hi I wanted to ask a general question regarding my System which I purchased nearly 1,5 years ago.
Its a prebuilt system from HP with an i5-6400 and an RX 480 4GB. Now the PSU that comes in the system is only a 300W unit and while I've never noticed or doubted that the GPU cant run properly off that I've had thoughts whether its performance is simply limited by the low Wattage. The RX480 is on the other hand also neither the reference model nor a third party model I ever saw online. Now it is/was always said that for an rx480 you should definitely have 400Watts available for constant load situations.

Any thoughts whether exchanging the PSU for a higher wattage unit could deliver any performance boosts or has HP probably just limited the GPU in such a sense that it runs to near full performance with the available wattage?

Thanks ahead!
 
Solution
geofelt
If HP packaged the psu and graphics together, they made certain that it would run.
A oem maker will typically use the cheapest psu that can do the job using what was initially installed.

As pointed out, a RX480 is a relatively power hungry card that typically runs with a 400-500w psu.
I suspect that HP might have de-tuned the card to run with the psu supplied.

What to do???

If you are running ok, do nothing.

If you want stronger graphics, try a stronger psu first.
Seasonic focus in the 550-650w size is very good.
You may need to do some graphics tuning to get better results, but with a strange RX480, that may not be possible.

A stronger psu will stand you in good stead if you want to upgrade your graphics card.
Perhaps to a...
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jay32267

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Mar 16, 2017
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Here's the thing....

....as the GPU draws more current.....at some point the voltage can go below what is required by at least one of the components in your PC and the whole thing crashes.

A PSU with insufficient power isn't going to cause low performance....it's going to cause crashes.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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If HP packaged the psu and graphics together, they made certain that it would run.
A oem maker will typically use the cheapest psu that can do the job using what was initially installed.

As pointed out, a RX480 is a relatively power hungry card that typically runs with a 400-500w psu.
I suspect that HP might have de-tuned the card to run with the psu supplied.

What to do???

If you are running ok, do nothing.

If you want stronger graphics, try a stronger psu first.
Seasonic focus in the 550-650w size is very good.
You may need to do some graphics tuning to get better results, but with a strange RX480, that may not be possible.

A stronger psu will stand you in good stead if you want to upgrade your graphics card.
Perhaps to a GTX1070ti class card.
 
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