Asus M5A97 Motherboard Power Supply

post your system specifications

also calculate power suppl requirement here

extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

also since your system is a old one so i do not think that you will be using a card that demand that much power alone,
and that 400w rating, it must the total true power of the psu for which the card is recomended for a normal system. if that is the case then 430 will be ok

It ought to work fine as long as you don't have it overloaded with too many HDDs and ODDs. And also if you don't plan to CF cards and OC the processor too much.

Wow, thank you so much for the prompt replies! And yes, My PC is pretty damn old. It's a Gateway PC that I purchased 4 years or so ago. The GPU and PSU was replaced 5months ago.  

I don't have any plans on using the CF anytime soon, but I would like to Over-Clock it slightly for gaming (WoW).

I really did need the help ASAP since the parts that I ordered are on its way. But without the proper Power Supply, I would be stuck when they got here so your help is Godsend.

I went to that site that Truegenis kindly linked for me and muddled my way through it but I'm not sure if I put in the correct numbers. My theory was - if I didn't know the answer, I skipped the question LOL, but this is the result:

Minimum PSU Wattage: 331 W
Recommended
PSU Wattage: * 381

I'm not confident that I did the test correctly, so here is my system spec/wall of text (to my knowledge).


Graphic card - ATI Radeon HD 5570
CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
Motherboard - Asus M5A97 Evo
Ram - 2 DDR3 (2x4G) = 8G total ram

Here onward, I used the site Belarc to give me my PC spec:

629.65 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
527.80 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH15F ATA Device [Optical drive]

IOI CF/M icroDrive Disk.. USB Device -- drive 1
IOI MS/M sPro Disk ... USB Device -- drive 4
IOI SD/M MC Disk ... USB Device -- drive 3
IOI SM/x D-Picture Disk.. USB Device -- drive 2
WDC WD6400AAKS-22A7B0 [Hard drive] (640.13 GB) -- drive 0
Controllers Display
ATA Channel 0 [Controller] (2x)
ATA Channel 1 [Controller] (2x)
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller (2x)

Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller (2x)
Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller (5x)

LSI PCI-SV92PP Soft Modem

hey, you have ph2 x4 955be, this is not a old cpu,it is a high performance cpu, my one is older than that.
but hd 5570 is not a good partner for that cpu, 5570 is a weak weak peace when it comes to performance

430 w is ok and you can do some overclock too

I will be upgrading to PH2 955 (SOOO looking forward to it!), the one I'm using right now is really old, it even has a known bug,PH 4X 9100e Quad Core. I will look into upgrading my GPU again when I can afford to, I really had no idea what was what when I bought it, since I've still relatively new to PC building.


Thank you so much for your help! I was sitting here worrying, you've just made my day! <3

  good luck

A motherboard doesn't require so much power like 400watt. The amd 970 MB chipset requires 15-18watt . That means for motherboard 20watts +125 watt for amd phenom 955be + another 75 watt max for your gpu (if the gpu doesn't require any additional power cords) + max 50-70 watt for other components like hdd and dvd rw and ram etc. So total requirement is 300 watt on full load so you 430 watt psu is not bad if it has a 80+ rating.

A motherboard doesn't require so much power like 400watt. The amd 970 MB chipset requires 15-18watt . That means for motherboard 20watts +125 watt for amd phenom 955be + another 75 watt max for your gpu (if the gpu doesn't require any additional power cords) + max 50-70 watt for other components like hdd and dvd rw and ram etc. So total requirement is 300 watt on full load so you 430 watt psu is not bad if it has a 80+ rating. I am running the same config except my MB is asus m4a88t mle with a 80+ gold 400 watt psu

My PSU says 430 with 80+ certified. I am guessing this makes it acceptable. I'm so relieved! Thanks again! *dance*

hey faiela, have you updated your bios to the latest, cause it is necessary to update bios to latest (or at least to the version that is mentioned for that cpu) when upgrading cpu.
If not then you may need to update it

For a system running with a single Radeon HD 5570 graphics card a power supply with a combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 18 Amps or greater is recommended.

Your Corsair Builder Series CX430, with its +12 Volt continuous current rating of 28 Amps, is more than sufficient to power your system.

You may find power supplies on the market that supply more than enough Wattage to run the system. However, many of them lack the Amperage capacity on the critical +12 Volt rail, which is necessary to support the labelled Wattage.

The two devices that consume the majority of the power, within the computer, are the CPU and the GPU. Both devices obtain all of their power from the +12 Volt rail(s).

Truegenius, I have not done much of anything yet. I've been just waiting for my parts to get here but I will do that when I start the process. Thanks for the reminder!

There seemed to be so many different types of PSU in such vast variety of price ranges that, I thought all I had to do was just grab whatever watt required PSU and stick it into my system. Thank you for the clarification, this will come in handy when it's time to upgrade my GPU.

I'm very grateful for the advice, Ko888.