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OEM Skimped on PSU?

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I just purchased a prebuilt system from an OEM. This system has:
*8GB DDR3
*i3 2nd Gen (65 Watt)
*DH61DL ITX Motherboard
*2 Sata Hard Drives
*1 Sata Optical Drive
*a PCIe X1 NIC

I am convinced that the 200W generic power supply included is not enough to power this.

From the motherboard documentation
"For example, for a system consisting of a supported 65 W processor (see Section 1.3
on page 16 for a list of supported processors), 1 GB DDR3 RAM, one high end video
card, one hard disk drive, one optical drive, and all board peripherals enabled, the
minimum recommended power supply is 350 W. Table 28 lists the recommended
power supply current values.
Table 28. Recommended Power Supply Current Values
Output Voltage 3.3 V 5V 12 V1 12 V2 -12 V 5 VSB
Current 17 A 18 A 12 A 18 A 0.8 A 2A"

Most high end video cards require a 350W power supply anyway! And how would you get one in any way considering the system only has a PCIe x1 expansion slot? This doesn't seem helpful or even targeted at this specific board.

Anyway I am convinced that this is in no way the correct power supply for this machine.

What do you think?

More about : oem skimped psu

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Power supply Expert

200 watts is appropriate for an ITX system, it's not designed to be expanded. You don't have a discrete graphics card, those functions are performed by the IGP

Pinhedd said:
200 watts is appropriate for an ITX system, it's not designed to be expanded. You don't have a discrete graphics card, those functions are performed by the IGP


It is expanded as far as it will go! Is 200W is enough even with the two hard drives, one optical, and PCIe nic?

Best solution

Power supply Master

Hard drives take about 15 W at the most, optical will be around the same level, the NIC takes less than 25W since that was the limit on PCI slots and PCI-e NICs aren't going to be sucking down any more than a PCI NIC would, so that is only about 70W for everything that isn't the CPU, RAM, and motherboard. Thats 70 W in the worst case scenario, likely a fair amount less.


OEMs cut their power supplies very very close to the limit, but not close enough to cause an issue. Your system is likely pulling 150 W from the wall at the most, and probably only around 130 W from the PSU at peak, that still only puts a 200 W unit at 65% capacity, so while 70 W of overhead would be very small on a normal gaming system pulling 400W from the wall, a small OEM machine means that you still have 35% of the PSU left for peak loads.

Aside, a "kill-a-watt" meter might give you some sense of closure. This $20 device measures electric usage. http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricit...

note that if your power supply ever actually got to 200w delivered to the PC then, assuming 80% efficiency, the kill-a-watt would read 200/0.8 = 250w from the wall.

For your system you will find the kill-a-watt reading between 75 and 100w under heavy load.

(Another way to see wattage used is to get a UPS to protect your system against momentary power failure. Many of these have wattage displays, but are priced near $100)
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