Power Supply for conroe

[2Cb]

Another thing,

So now that Core 2 Duo uses much less power,

Would an e6600 with a Geforce 7950gx2 do fine with a quality 400w power supply?

Thanks in advance.

 

[mpjesse]

Probably. But I would go w/ at least 450 if it were me. If 400 is what u've got now, just try and see. You won't hurt anything. If it doesn't POST or there's stability issues, then u know u'll need a 450 or 500W PSU.

 

[jaguarskx]

Another thing,

So now that Core 2 Duo uses much less power,

Would an e6600 with a Geforce 7950gx2 do fine with a quality 400w power supply?

Thanks in advance.

Not a good idea in my opinion. Xbitlabs.com usually does power measurements of both CPUs and GPUs, but they haven't measured how much power the 7950GX2 will consume. They guess that it consumes 110w - 120w or 9.16 amps to 10 amps on the 12v rail. That's a lot of power for a 400w PSU which usually provides 18 amps (a guess).

Consider that at stock speed the E6600 consumes 52w, or 4.33 amps on the 12v rail.

A 300GB hard drives draws about 25w or 2.08 amps, and a DVD-Burner draws about 18w or 1.5 amp on the 12v rail.

At this point the total amps consumed adds up to 17.92 amps. The typical 400w PSU delivers 18 amps on the 12 rail. That leaves very little headroom. I haven't even taken into conisderation fans and possible motherboard components that draws power from the 12v rail.

Do yourself a favor and buy a good quality PSU with at least 22 amps if you want to head down this route. A PSU with 26 amps on the 12v rails is more than enough and will give you enough headroom for future upgrades.

 

[mpjesse]

http://www.enermax.com/english/product_Display1.asp?PrID=20 <-------- my PSU.

My setup:
3 case fans (120mm)
2x WD Raptors (74GB)
Athlon X2 4800+ (Toledo) OC'd to 2.7Ghz
4x256MB DIMMs (Corsair TWINX3200LLPT)
2x 7800 GTX's
1x Asus A8N-SLI Premium
1x wireless nic
1x DVDRW
1x CDRW
600x USB devices

If my little ole 420W PSU can support all that, his proposed setup can handle a GX2 and C2D. The GX2 consumes less power than a SLI setup. Provided of course he has a quality PSU.

Point is, there's no harm in him trying to run all that on an existing 400W PSU. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

 

[2Cb]

Great, sounds good.

Thanks again for all the good advice!

 

[maury73]

A 300GB hard drives draws about 25w or 2.08 amps, and a DVD-Burner draws about 18w or 1.5 amp on the 12v rail

Pay attention: 25W is the total maximum power (not the maximum rated) drawn by the unit on both 12V and 5V rails!
HD and optical devices use the 12V rail only for the motors, all the logic and analogic circuitries are powered by the 5V rail through high efficiency DC-DC converters: the spikes and EMI generated on the 12V rail by the motor cannot be filtered in any way to such a low level (less than 50uV) to allow reliable operation of the analogic amplifiers, they must get the analog and ECL power supplies doubling and filtering the 5V rail.
Fast HD (all kinds, no matter the size and the spindle speed) draw at most 1-1.2A in continuous read/write operation: 2-2.5A is the maximum current drawn at startup (with spikes up to 5A for a few microseconds).
And DVD burners draw 1.2A writing in the innner part of the disc (when the motor rotates faster).
I'm sure of that because our company integrates about 900 HD per year in our banking machines for data logging and we never saw any HD drawing more than 1.2A on 12V and 0.8A on 5V: we have electronic limiters on all the external devices connectors trimmed at 1.5A continuous and no HD triggered it over 2 years of 24/7 operation.

 

[jaguarskx]

A 300GB hard drives draws about 25w or 2.08 amps, and a DVD-Burner draws about 18w or 1.5 amp on the 12v rail

Pay attention: 25W is the total maximum power (not the maximum rated) drawn by the unit on both 12V and 5V rails!


Actually, I know that already. But the problem is each manufacturer and model draws different amounts of power. I try to err on the high side as a safety measure.

As can be seen in the following Digital-Life article, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 300GB hard drives consumes 29.05w at Maximum Spinup Power on both 5v and 12v combined (scroll to about the middle of the page).

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/storage/hddpower.html

Therefore, my estimate of 25w on the 12v seems to very reasonable. I prefer to estimate a little high rather than a little low.

I'm sure of that because our company integrates about 900 HD per year in our banking machines for data logging and we never saw any HD drawing more than 1.2A on 12V and 0.8A on 5V: we have electronic limiters on all the external devices connectors trimmed at 1.5A continuous and no HD triggered it over 2 years of 24/7 operation.

Which company is that?

Since it seems you work in the industry you would know better than I of the hard drive power consumption. Since I do not work in the IT field, I more or less need to do research on HDD power consumption. Disputing the validity and/or testing methods used by Digital-Life is certainly beyond my capabilities. But at least I do research, before providing numbers.

 

[illuminatirex]

will a 480W thermaltake purepower (18A) be enough for :

Asus p5w dh deluxe mobo
core 2 duo e6600
corsair xms 2 gigs of ddr2 (800) ram
sapphire radeon x850xt
a ati tv tuner pro card
2 hd's (IDE)
2 optical drives (dvd drive, and a cd-rw drive)
7 (80 mm) fans, and 2 (tiny hd cooler fans in bay)

will that psu be enough for this sytem? im not planin to oo canything

thx

 

[jaguarskx]

I think you are cutting it too close with the Thermaltake PurePower 480. You should get a PSU that can provide at least 24 amps for some potentional future additions.

Here's my estimates of your power consumption on the 12v rail:

Conroe E6600...............................52w Click to see CPU Power Consumption (Burn)
Radeon X850XT.............................69w Click to see X850XT measured power consumption
Motherboard.................................20w (only a buffer, mobo draws power from 3.3v rails, and 5v rails.)
2 Hard Drive (decent capacity)......40w (20w x 2)
2 Optical Drives............................28w (14w x 2)
7 80mm fans................................28w (4w x 7) - Assuming full speed.
2 HD cooler fans............................4w (just a guess)
RAM..............................................0w (RAM draws power from the 3.3v rail)
ATI TV Tuner Pro card...................0w (All PCI cards draws power from the 3.3v/5v rails)

Total Power Consumption..............241w

Total Amps..................................20.08 (241w / 12v)

As you can see, I estimate that this system needs more amps than the PurePower can provide. Even taking out the 20w "buffer" on the motherboard, that would work out to 18.41 amps, round down to 18 amps if you wish.

Granted, this is assuming every single component is running at 100% which will not happen. While gaming, I estimate your system will draw about 211w with the "20w buffer", and 191w without. That means about 17.6 amps, or 15.9 amps (without the buffer).

 

[illuminatirex]

thx for the calculations, for now i would not add anything more, i was planing to add a new dx10 card when they come out, but then i would buy one of those front bay "mini power supplies just for the graphics card, and the rest would be powered from the thermaltake purepower(480W)psu. I think that those 7 80 mm fans use 2 W each not 4 but i might be mistaken, usually i have no more than 3 of them turned on to max, i usualy have them all turned to 50% and while gaming only the side and back ones turened to 100% and the frontal and top ones to 50% or so. Would taking out the hd cooling fans hellp a bit to decerease the amperage? (they are tiny 30 mm or so...im not shoor) would taking out one of the dvd or cd-rw drives help? i could atach it using an external encasings or one of those usb to ata cable connectors.

thx

 

[2Cb]

Thx all.

It runs great with a 460 Watt server power supply now.
Plenty of stuff connected and no problems. The times of 500+ seem over.

Yours,

2Cb.