Graphics cards with Power Requirements

Almost a year ago, i bought a new system with an onboard video card, with the personal understanding that "it's just for a little while until i can afford a video card"

As i said, that was almost a year ago. Money now allows me to do it. Here's what i'm looking at. it's not by any means the best, but it'l work for what i wanna do.

ASUS GeForce 8800GS 550MHZ 384MB 1.6GHZ DDR3 Dual DVI-I HDTV Out DIRECTX10 PCI-E Video Card

Now, although i cannot find the following requirement on THIS card, i do see it on a lot of 8800 series cards, and some even lower.

"Requires 400 Watt Power Supply."

Okay, so i feel dumb for going to for the 350 Watt. But what's it actually going to hurt? I've got almost nothing else in my system. 1 IDE Hard Drive, 1 CD/DVD Combo Drive. That's it. I use onboard sound, onboard networking, and none of my USB Devices are active while i'm going to be using the Video Card. Hell, even the CD/DVD drive should be inactive during gameplay, since i use NO-CD Cracks to keep em that way (I HATE having a game spin up a CD on a level load, when i know damned well it's go the data on the HD)

So i guess my actual question here is, what are the symptoms of not having enough power? Overall "cannot boot", or just slightly lowered performance? With 350 I'm not far off, and 400 sounds like a guess-worked number anyway. Given that i could have a 500 Watt power supply with 3PCI Cards, 4HDs, 5 lights and 6 extra fans, the numbers must have some leeway to them.

Thanks.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your answer.

Ahhh, I see what your getting at.

I'l do some more research on my PSU.

Thank You.

That psu has a combined 12 volt rating of 348/12=29amps that is more than enough to run 8800gs/9600gso