OC 8800 GT on 500Watts

Hello again,

Recently had a discussion over my card in the GFX thread between 8800 GT 256 vs. 512MB. After doing my own research combined with the help on the forums, my speculations were right and I went with the 512MB card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814125088

Now my question is, since the card comes OC'd at 700mhz, will my power supply be able to handle it, from preliminary research it should handle it without a problem but I want to make sure, given that my computer wont recieve another upgrade for quite sometime. I tried looking online to find my power supply and heres the only search I could find:

http://www.pricebat.com/apex-al-b5 [...] p_3033139/

and this is my case but in white just in case anyone wanted to know about it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811144153


AMD 64 Athlon 3800+ 2.4GhZ
Current: 8500 GT .... Tomorrow: 8800 GT OC'd 700mhz
2GB RAM
500 Watt Power Supply
Windows XP 32-bit SP3

Now, I've never had heating problems in the past, and my computer technically can handle SLI although I've never done it. I just want to confirm that using my 500 Watts my computer will be able to run this card without blowing up on me. Thank you.

Well it depends on what is on the label and if it actually can DELIVER the 500 watts... a lot of higher powered units fold WAAY before their rating..check out www.jonnyguru.com and look at the bargain basement roundup among other tests.

Now my personal system is running on a kingmax 450 with 16a on 1 rail and 17a on the second 12 volt rail, it runs just fine. However my power supply can actually deliver 500 watts and it can go as high as 19 a on both.

Older supplies used to put all the power on the 3 and 5 volt rails since that is what powered the motherboard, ram, and some gpus; now everything gets it's power off the 12 volt side and nothing uses 5v side.

If your PS can output 17 amps or so on 2 rails, or at least 30 if it is 1 rail...I'd think it would work fine for you. That is if it can do that and if the sticker is not full of bs if it says it can.

Alright well I popped it open earlier, but it has a chart and a whole bunch of crap written all over. It has a chart that has +5v +12v and +3.3V under which +12v says its @ 20A, not really sure what the means im not very computer savy.

I tried looking to see if it was duel rail or not like people say, but once again couldn't find it and im afraid it might be a single rail one. It says it can hold 500 watts although at bottom it says "+3, +12, +5v should be run at 472 watts" or something along those lines.


I looked online to find specs for it but once again I don't understand anything, and im really on a tight budget I dont think i'll be able to buy another Power Supply but I dont want to mess up my whole rig because of this.

Yeah, i don't think 20 is quite enough, it's enough for the card sure, but considering you have to power other stuff...I don't think so.

As far as dual rails, it would have +12v1, +12v2...etc...if it just has 1 +12v then it is a single rail

I believe the geforces will actually slow down on purpose when they don't have enough juice...to a point.

Try it and see...

That P/S is a single 20A 12v rail you need about 28A for the 8800GT, so I would shoot for if you went single rail with no intentions of SLI down the road around 40A should be more than adequate.

Its better to be safe than sorry, you could just lose your P/S or it could take more than that with it when it goes!

hey guys this might be a bit of a noobish question but nevertheless... does it matter how much is on each rail as long as the combined total is large enough? so for example a PSU with 4 12v rails of 18A each... does that mean more than one of the rails would take up the 8800GT strain if the first one couldnt take it? learn something new every day...