psu 300w x 2 ?

[Guest]

I am building a new system "266a chipset + 1800xp proccesor" and i have been told i will need a 400 watt plus psu, is this corerect?
Also instead of using a 400 watt psu could i use 2 x 300 watt psu's to accomodate the extra power consumption

 

[ejsmith2]

You can, but you'd still be on the edge.

Power supplies (and the way they are marketed) are a funny thing. It's important to remember the 3.3/5 and the 12v rails are seperate. Which is like having two seperate power supplies per PSU. Each is using a seperate transformer, which is limited in it's amperage due to the size of the wire forming the coil.

That processor and Videocard pull a bunch of amperage on the 3.3/5v rail. A 400W will boost your 3.3/5v rails enough to power that stuff. People rarely *ever* go overbudget on the 12v rail, unless they are trying to run a peltier. Which makes the 3.3/5 the real limiter on PSU's.

If you snipped off the mainboard leads, and wired the two psu's in parallel, THAT might do the trick. But, especially if they are different brands, god only knows what kind of voltage they are putting out. Could very easily fry both psu's.

Rich is the nation that has many war heroes. Long since forgotten...

 

[FatBurger]

Get a good quality 300w, and you'll be fine.

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[Guest]

for a "standard" Ath XP system you will not need more than a 300w, I run an old ish 750MHz ath system, with 5 HDD 3 CD drives and a full PCI rack on a MSI Mboard, and have no prroblems....

 

[ejsmith2]

You'd be surprised how much less power a 750 chews up, compared to a 1.4g.

Rich is the nation that has many war heroes. Long since forgotten...