Ultra V Series 500w Enough for X1900XT? If not, recs please.

[ELB]

Unaware of the X1900XT's 12v rail w/30amp recommendation, I purchased an Ultra V-Series 500w PSU, because it was dirt cheap (I think $10 with rebate) and quite well rated given its dirt cheapness. Well, according to the specs, it falls 2 amps short (28 amps on one 12v rail), and I'm thinking from all I've read that this isn't going to work...or work well. If I'm wrong, please let me know as I'd much rather not have to wait for a new PSU to build the PC, which lies in shiny new pieces on the living room floor.

But if I'm right and I need a new PSU, could anyone recommend something that will satisfy the X1900XT's hunger without breaking the bank (as in $150 for a PSU)? Obviously, if I can get some headroom for OC'ing, that'd be great as I may do it later, but I don't plan to OC at this time.

Oh, and here are the specs of the new machine, if that's relevant:

C2D E6600 w/Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Gigabyte GA-965P
2 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800
Radeon X1900XT w/Zalman VF-900
WD Caviar SE 250 GB
Samsung 162L Lightscribe
SB Audigy 4
Creative Inspire P7800
Thermaltake Mambo case

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

- ELB

 

[doolittle]

This is the psu?

I would go ahead and do the install, any problems you will have will be in playing games (since the +12v current demand will probably steal away from the +3.3v and +5).

So the easy fix will be to suppliment the +12v with one of those GPU-PSUs like this Thermaltake W0099RU 250w GPU PSU which is $57 shipped @ newegg and a bit cheaper from amazon and zipzoomfly for $46 and $50 respectfully.

Call it a "dual rail conversion kit" should work great if you have the 5.25" bay available.

 

[jaguarskx]

The Ultra 500w should be good enough with it's 28 amps.

Assuming you will be OC'ing the Conroe E6600 to the speed of the X6800, the power consumption will be 66w.

The Radeon X1900XT consumes 109w.

A 250GB HDD should consume about 22w on the 12v rail.

A DVD burner should consume about 14w on the 12v rail.

Assuming you have 3 120mm case fans, that should be about 15w of power.

All other components draws power from the 3.3v or 5v rails.

Total estimated power consumption on the 12v rail is 226w or 18.83 amps.

The charts are from www.xbitlabs.com reviews.

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In my opinion, Ultra power supplies are not good. I would personally have spent more money on a brand name PSU like Antec, Enermax, Fortron, Silverstone, or Seasonic.

 

[cd14]

I don't have any numbers for you but, my Core 2/1900xt setup works fine with my old 400 watt Antec SL400 and even overclocked to 3.2ghz. It only puts out 18amps on its single rail 12volt. When I bought the 1900xt, I saw the requirements so I bought an 500 watt Ultra dual rail ps. It worked fine, just like my Antec. Perhaps the Antec will go someday, but for now it's working. I think the video card specs are a little overkill... 450 watts, 30 amps.

 

[ELB]

Thanks very much for getting back to me with this information. I am indeed going to try the Ultra V-series as is. If it proves insufficient, I'll kick in for Thermaltake's dedicated-GPU PSU (W0099RU) or some such. But I'm hearing more and more folks say that their X1900XT is working just fine below the recommended specs.

- ELB