Power supply question

Will 480W be enough?

  • Yes

    Votes: 15 60.0%
  • No

    Votes: 6 24.0%
  • Close enough ;)

    Votes: 4 16.0%

  • Total voters
    25

illuminatirex

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Hi, im planning to put together a new pc i was wondering if this (Thermaltake Purepower 480W) power suply would be enough to work with these parts that I will be buying soon, here are the components:

- Asus P5WD2-E Premium motherboard
-Intel Pentium 4 640 Preocessor (its a 3.2)
-ATI A-I-W Radeon x1900
-1 or 2 Gigs of DDR2 ram (im stil thinkink if i should get 2 gigs or 1 will be enough)
- 2 hard drives
- 2 optical drives ( a DVD drive and a CD-RW drive)
- 1 floppy rdive
- a Thermaltake case with 7*80mm fans, and 2*60mm fans (in a HD cooling bay)

Will the 480W power supply be enough to power this system? it has a absolute peak output of 550W , but just looking at 480W will it be enough?

Thank You for reading my post, and thx for replies in advance.
 

bilbo3660

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I love the Gigabyte 3D Aurora! Choice of left panel mesh screen or window and some bling with quiet cooling with three 120mm blue LED fans. It also has a feature where you can project your name or logo instead of Gigabyte's. Excellent reviews, ie. xbitlabs, hothardware, tweaktown, etc. And, it's geared for water-cooling if you want to go that route now or later. This baby is going to house my build in Q3.
 

illuminatirex

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I have the thermaltake xaser III series blue i had it for a while, and i like it so far;)

ill be replacing the inerds;) a new mobo, ram, cpu, vid card, the 2 hd, and 2 optical drives, control bay/fans, and the antec hsf cooling bay, PSU(if itll be enough) will be the same, i thought the PSU is good;) its nice and cold all the time, so i guess that litle bust from new parts will not take much from it;) hopefully


btw does anyone know maby what Watage would this system use(listed above?) just aout curiosity ;)

thx, much oblidged:)
 

illuminatirex

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i think each fan uses 1 or 2 W and they are not so laud, the psu (2 fans inside) are loudest, but they have a manual speed controler, as the otehr 7 do ;) (in the bay, i think it is a canoo design;)
 

illuminatirex

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thx, i used that site to calculate it (yesterday) and it all came out to be 377W (i used a radeon x19xtx instead of the 1900aiw, which was not available there, and just to be safe;)) so i think (if the calculations are corrct, and precise) that that almost 103W of overhead with my 480W psu is good:) and I believe that i can use it for my future rig :) cool:)

just im a bit woried about the (i found this on a retailers site) 30A on a 12v rail requirement, i think i have nly 18A, will that be very bad? i checked some new psu and they has simmilar amperage, does it mean its 18A on only one rail, and the "combined" amperage is more? hm...does a rail mean that one string of 12v molex cables? (just asking to be shoor) ;)

Thank You all for the assistance once again. :)
 

bilbo3660

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Manufacturers frequently overstate the power requirements of their cards just in case someone has an inordinate number of power consuming components in their system. However, it's a long way from 30A to 18A.

With multiple +12V rail psu's take the total wattage shown for the combined +12V rails and divide by 12 to get the total amps for the +12V rail. You can't simply total the rails. For example, a psu with three +12V rails and 18A on each doesn't necessarily give you 54A. If the combined +12V wattage is say 504W, dividing by 12 shows you getting 42A from the +12V rails. Still an awful lot! This is a real world example using the Antec NeoHE 550.

The X1900XTX is the most power hungry card around so even though your psu might have enough watts it may not have enough amps for it.
 

illuminatirex

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thx for the info so if i did calculate it right i have 40A (480W/12v)

and in redards to 1900xtx im not planning to buy it i just did input it just to check the Watage (supposable max;) power usage) im planning to get a ATI 1900 A-I-W (with the above other parts) so i think (hope) it will be enough,

btw in regards to that 18A information, how do companies state the Amperage? by rails or total Amperage on the lets say 12v?

btw just out of curiosity what might happen if the psu is 2 weak for components that need more power, would it hm...explode, fry the parts or just not work, just curious ;)......this will be my first pc that i would put together from scratch, (i did upgrade my ram, vid card, case, psu thou, and rep[laced 3 hd's, and 1 cdrw drive...so hopefully it wont be sho problematic to hm..."start from scratch";)
 

Grimmy

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btw just out of curiosity what might happen if the psu is 2 weak for components that need more power, would it hm...explode, fry the parts or just not work, just curious ;)......this will be my first pc that i would put together from scratch, (i did upgrade my ram, vid card, case, psu thou, and rep[laced 3 hd's, and 1 cdrw drive...so hopefully it wont be sho problematic to hm..."start from scratch";)

I would say... instability problems (shutdowns, freezes, BSOD, ect). leading to PSU failing, which could take out something on the motherboard, if it doesn't regulate the voltage properly. And the least thing expected.. power spikes or surges can really cause some unexepected headaches.
 

illuminatirex

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lol...not so nice:( ;)
its good atleast that i have the whole pc connected to a "cyber power 1000AVR backup power with automatic voltage regulator" lol, so the spikes are reduced to almost none, or atleast they say so;)....but honestly those back up bateries are good:) lol during those blackouts during summers ;)
thx for the info.....so i guess if the calculations above are correct the psu would be strong enough Watage, and Amperage wise;) :)....hopefully
 

bilbo3660

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Sorry, you did it wrong. Every psu has a power label. Yours show just one +12V rail so there is nothing to calulate. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage.asp?image=17-153-012-26.jpg,17-153-012-23.JPG,17-153-012-24.JPG,17-153-012-25.jpg,17-153-012-22.JPG,17-153-012-28.jpg,17-153-012-27.jpg,17-153-012-20.JPG&CurImage=17-153-012-25.jpg&Description=Thermaltake%20Purepower%20W0021%20ATX%20480W%20Power%20Supply%20-%20Retail
It provides 18 amperes. This is an example of what I was talking about with respect to multiple +12V rails. http://www.thinkcomputers.org/reviews/antec_Neo_HE/tn_antec%20HE%20(8).JPG
It shows three +12V rails. Some have four.

If you don't have enough power nothing will fry or explode. Some cards will give an error message saying it's not getting enough power. Some games might freeze on you or throw you back to your desktop, BSOD, rebooting. If you do not have enough power for your card/system you will find out pretty quickly without anything dire happening.
 

illuminatirex

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ok thx for the info, aprecieate it, my psu ia a W0011 model ( a bit older) but ill have to check it lol 2 bad its on the other side(the sticker) so ill have to take the cpu out ....:( ...somehow;)...or maby ill just slide a mirror there;) ...somehow thx again
 

illuminatirex

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i found it here is the psu i have:

http://www.thermaltake.com/purepower/W001011.htm

will it have enough power? it is only 18A on the 12V :(
it has the same specs as teh one You posted (thermaltake)

and the
http://www.thinkcomputers.org/reviews/antec_Neo_HE/tn_antec%20HE%20(8).JPG
http://www.thinkcomputers.org/beta/home.php?x=reviews&id=96&page=3 <----thats the one i have


it is weird or not, but there are atleast 2 long main 12 "wires" going from teh psu, and only 1 is listed on my sticker...nevermind maby i got rails confused with the separate cables:(
 

Corasik

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40A 5V, and 18A 12 volt, that indicates an older design of PSU, for P3's and Athlons (Not AMD64's), where the CPU used to draw from the 5V rail.

P4's and AMD64's draw from 12V, so need a higher rated 12v rail. It wouldnt surprise me if your system could overload the 12v line if its only 18 amps.

Of course when AGP cards ran off the motherboard, they would draw power from the 5V rail, but all the big powerfull cards now use an extra power connector, and draw heavily from 12V rails.

Many of the watt calculators seem to be made by companies who sell large PSU's, even quite high end computers often sit well below 300w total power. However P4+Power Hungry GPU's could draw a large percentage of the total power, and 18A@12V only gives you 216W to play with, and I would suggest that is insuffficient.

I would strongly consider a more balanced designed powersupply, which will be able to supply your computers demands for 12V power.

That said, just throwing in a 680W PSU is not always the best plan, all PSU's are only efficient to a point, most PSU's seem to be best around 70% load. Lightly loaded, you may find the big PSU will draw more power from the mains supply than you actually need to run the computer, and all the 'extra' power will be converted to heat. If your computers load is around the 350W mark, then a properly designed 480W PSU with multiple 12v rails, or a single high current rail, will probably be the best choice.
 

Grimmy

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If you don't have enough power nothing will fry or explode. Some cards will give an error message saying it's not getting enough power. Some games might freeze on you or throw you back to your desktop, BSOD, rebooting. If you do not have enough power for your card/system you will find out pretty quickly without anything dire happening.

Thats not entirely true.

I have witness a PSU under allot stress. To give you an example, I remember the day where we only had 250W PSU.

The system had 4 SCSI 10K-RPM drives, SCSI Tape Backup, 1 IDE CDROM, *Can't remember how much ram, but all 4 banks were used, and it was a dual slot PII 450 system, nic card, ect.. full load system.

Now.. the system didn't power up at times. The only impression I can give you to mimmic this is.. when it power button was press, we got.. "I think I can... I think I can.. I thin... x.X"

And I do remember touching the top of the case where the PSU was. This is on the outside of the case... it was HOT. You prolly could fry an egg on it. Something will give and break when under stress.

So it is always best to consider how much power your system is going to need, especially when todays systems are under full load.
 

bilbo3660

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Of course it is always best to calculate what your system's power requirements are and build some overhead. When a psu is running at 100% it will get HOT. When you push it far enough over 100% it will shut down. This is what Over Voltage Protection does. :wink:

Corsair probably knows a thing or two about highend gaming systems so this is a good article for those recommending 600W - 700W psu's. :p They build a system with two of everything, including 7800GTX, overclock it and power it all with a 480W psu...that's not even SLI-certified. :lol:
http://sysbuild.corsairmemory.com/report.aspx?id=2.