Just checked antec's power supply chart, and...

[bourgeoisdude]

Okay, I'm upgrading the PC listed in my signature below. The 550W PSU is the ORIGINAL TruePower 550W I bought almost 3 years ago now (look here). Okay, now to let the cat out of the bag: I bought this video card ETA this Wednesday, April 11th, and the rest of my specs are in my sig. I ran that on the antec power supply thingamajiggy, it says that at 85% cpu load and 100% usage my PSU will need to be at least 543W. Alright, barely there, but there, right? Wrong! My PSU only has a single 30A +12V rail on my version, and while the card's 26A 12V requirement is a safe figure, I have a big cpu, 4 hard drives, a CD-RW not in my sig, 4 usb devices, and an old PCI 4.1 soundcard. Since my PSU is almost 3 years old, I used a safe guess that it had 25% capacitor aging, and guess what? 587W!

So...should I be worried that my current PSU is simply too old to handle the new load I'm fixing to place on it? Any opinions/info about how a power supply ages over time? What do you guys think?

 

[akhilles]

The antec link ain't working for me. Is that it?

http://www.antec.com/specs/true550_spe.html

You can try. It wouldn't blow up, but if it does, you're out a grand. I would get a new one of a different brand. Probably 500-600w 30a+ brand name.

 

[bourgeoisdude]

The antec link ain't working for me. Is that it?

http://www.antec.com/specs/true550_spe.html

You can try. It wouldn't blow up, but if it does, you're out a grand. I would get a new one of a different brand. Probably 500-600w 30a+ brand name.

(smashes forehead on keyboard) Fixed the URL...

 

[CmdPT]

You would need more Amps, I would suggest getting Seasonic S12 Energy+ 550W or even 650W and OCZ GameXStream 600W or 700W.

 

[bourgeoisdude]

Yeah...its not the brand that has anything to do with it but the age. I bought that PSU to replace my 300W POS don't-even-know-the-brand Power supply back in 2004, but wanted to re-use the PSU for a brand new rig in the future so spent almost $170 on a big power supply.

At the time this 550 Watter was more than enough--the FX5950 ultra was the biggest video card around at the time! I guess it is time to move on. Thanks for the input, guys...any other comments/suggestions/discussion is welcome.

 

[bourgeoisdude]

Basically I bought the 8800GTS "knowing" that my psu could handle it, but only recently re-discovered the specs of my 550W PSU being greatly inferior to the TP 2.0 version of the same power supply. The single 30A 12V rail didnt worry me still except that I use two IDE hdds and may start using two SATA drives as well, and the IDEs use 12V I'm sure so it is cutting it close. My cpu is also the power hungry one of the day, but keep in mind that I have no intention nor have I ever had the desire to overclock anything, so I'm still thinking my psu can handle this.

Again I set everything to 100% in the psu chart thingie, and since I do not leave my pc on 24/7, and rarely will push the 8800gts to its limits for long periods of time (I'll run 3DMark06 on it but that'll be the most stress it will see in the near future methinks), it should work. But...then again two people gave me the response I did not expect. One seems to imply that Antec = crap, which implies they are heavily biased in their conclusion based on brand and not specifications (please correct me if I'm wrong) but the other seems to think that 30 Amps is simply not enough.

So is it different if I never overclock? Since I never use my CD-RW drive anymore I'll likely just unplug it too, power and ide, freeing up a good 17W from the unit. Still concerned, and if so, how much?