300w enough for Athlon XP?

[Guest]

Just ordered a brand-spanking new Athlon XP, Soyo Dragon+ mobo, a 512 stick of DDR ram, and Windows XP. Oh yeah baby!

Here's the question: Will my 300w power supply be enough? I don't have any unusual accessories in my PC (not anymore at least -- lol learned about power management "the hard way"). Off the top of my head, here's what I have: CD-ROM, 1 hard drive, couple of PCI cards, 2 fans, floppy, GeForce Pro and an internal zip drive... probably some other stuff too but I'm too lazy to get down and actually catalog everything... lmao.

Well any thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated. I don't know the minimum requirements- so to speak- of the new XP's.

Thanks,
John Lawrence

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Flying an airplane is just like riding a bike, it's just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes."
--Capt. Kramer, "Airplane!"

 

[Guest]

300W should be sufficient as long as you don’t have a whole bunch of unusual extras inside and out that are powered by the PSU. It doesn’t sound as though you do, so you should be ok. If you are planning on making a lot of additions in the future, I would think about a 350W or 400W though. \

The most important thing is that it is a good quality PSU. AMD has a list of recommended PSUs at their web site. Anything 300W + off that list will be fine

One other thing. I'd recommend 2 256 strips of RAM over 1 512. It's cheaper (at least at crucial.com where I get my memory) and faster then a single stick.

 

[tlaughrey]

I have an Athlon XP 1900+, a GeForce 3 Ti500, 2 hard drives connected to a RAID controller, 2 optical drives, and 512MB of RAM. I have a 300W power supply and don't have any problems. You should be okay as long as you choose a good quality one.

<i>I made you look. But I can't make you see.</i>

 

[Matisaro]

Yep, the others are very correct, its quality not quantity which matters, a good 300w psu can last where a cheapass 350W would fail.

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!

 

[tlaughrey]

I actually tried to upgrade to an Enermax Whisper 431W PSU and it wouldn't work. So I stuck with my 300W. I later read at the Shuttle website that Enermax PSU's don't get along well with Shuttle mobo's. Kind of weird, huh, since everyone talks about Enermax like they walk on water.

<i>I made you look. But I can't make you see.</i>

 

[Guest]

Hmm… That is rather odd. I’ve never heard of that before. Perhaps it has something to do with the heat sensor. I have an Enermax 365W whisper and it works wonderfully. It’s so quiet I can hear the passing of the air through it more then I can hear the grinding of the fan. It sounds like a gentle breeze if you put your ear by it.

 

[khha4113]

I actually tried to upgrade to an Enermax Whisper 431W PSU and it wouldn't work.

Me too with my Asus A7V133 and TBird 1000@1400MHz. Mine sometimes would crash suddenly (I checked and it seemed that 5V line was low ~4.8V). Changed to A1 400W and works fine (just a little bit noisier), although my Enermax works great with my Abit KG7-RAID(!).

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[Guest]

The voltage variance should not have been much of an issue. A variance of 5% (quick estimate in my head on those figures) is insignificant, even quite normal. I’m at a loss as to why you fellows had problems though.

 

[tlaughrey]

My system wouldn't even boot with the Enermax. No video signal, no POST, no beeps, nothing. It was bizarre. I took it out and put it in my older PIII system and it worked fine. Oh well ...

<i>I made you look. But I can't make you see.</i>

 

[Ikonomi]

http://www.ocworkbench.com/articles/psu/psup1.htm

The material in that link was written specifically for the ECS K7S5A, but it contains a lot of good general tips and guidelines.

In my experience, some boards (*coughK7S5Acough*) and systems can be very picky about the PSU you hook to them. Definitely go for a quality power supply. I guarantee you will waste money going with a cheap one, especially in the kind of system people normally build these days, with CD burners and whatever else.

That said, a high-quality 300W PSU should be sufficient. I'm using a 300 in my AMD system, and while the maximum power output of the unit isn't terribly high, the power remains very, very constant and I've had no problems with it.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

two real life examples.
1. my system. athlon 1200C and a generic omni 300W. was okay at stock, but put out alot of heat... as soon as i started overclockign it really struggled. constant crashes, high heat output, low voltages. switched to an enermax and zero problems since

2. friends had a generic 350W codegen on a athlon 1400C... constant issues for a month...lots of crashes then the PSU put out a smokey smell and never worked again.
got him a 430W enermax... 95% less problems since. although his rather crappy a7a266 still cauzes a bit of grief on occasion

Overclocked athlon 1200C @ 8.5 x 166FSB + PC2700 = GOOD!

 

[AMD_Man]

although his rather crappy a7a266 still cauzes a bit of grief on occasion

He should've went with the A7A266-E that includes rev.c of the ALi Magik1. Previous revisions of the ALi Magik1 sucked (performance-wise) in my opinion. Rev.C can compete with the KT266A with the correct memory timings in the BIOS.


AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Tiberius13]

<<One other thing. I'd recommend 2 256 strips of RAM over 1 512. It's cheaper (at least at crucial.com where I get my memory) and faster then a single stick.>>

First - at crucial.com the premium for a 512 stick of ddr over 2 256 sticks is only $10. Not exactly prohibitive (especially for people who only have 2 dimm slots on their motherboard and may wish to add more RAM later)

Second... is it true that 2 256 sticks is faster than 1 512? If so, how much faster? My gut tells me that any difference in performance would be negligible.

 

[Guest]

Most people use 300W , it should be ok

 

[Guest]

<i>..."Second... is it true that 2 256 sticks is faster than 1 512? If so, how much faster? My gut tells me that any difference in performance would be negligible...</i>

I agree. For example, my XP 1900+ based system has always had one stick of CAS 2.5 PC2100 512 Kingston, but that hasn't stopped me from overclocking to as high as 1778 MHz. Therefore, I honestly can't imagine getting any significantly higher speed than if I were using 2 sticks.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

"shoulda gone for the kt266a..."

*LAUGHS*

bear in mind the timeframe matey!
he got this mobo back when the 760 ruled supreme... the kt266a was a wet dream for via and the sis735 was as rare as horsepower in my cars engine!

Overclocked athlon 1200C @ 8.5 x 166FSB + PC2700 = GOOD!

 

[lhgpoobaa]

well it may be faster... depends.
two points to make

regardless of what u get u will be running at 133mhz. (PC2100)

and it is much easier to get 2 sticks of PC2100 that are rated to run at Cas2 than 1 stick of 512mb at cas2. not impossible mind, just a little harder.

bottom line is:
make sure it works at cas2, then pick whats best for you, 512mb if u have a hunch u may need more later on.

interestingly, ive read a review where people have tested ram overclocking, and have actually found that one stick can maintain a higher overclock than 2 or 3.

Overclocked athlon 1200C @ 8.5 x 166FSB + PC2700 = GOOD!