Upgrading to a Sapphire Radeon HD 7870, wondering about PSU

[DoctorKratos]

I want to upgrade to a Sapphire Radeon HD 7870:
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=43_1200_557_558&item_id=058063
The card requires a 500W power supply to run.
I have a DX4860-EF31P and I opened it up to find a LITEON PS-6451-5AE which is apparently a 500W PSU.
My question is:
Will this PSU be sufficient enough for the graphics card I want to upgrade to?
I initially thought that my pc had a 300W PSU and so now I am a bit confused.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Make sure you have the right PSU. Search the serial number online. If it is a 500w PSU you should be perfectly fine. The companies set wattage way higher than it actually needs to help avoid problems and get less messages about the card not working. My x800pro for example, which is a very old card, but it says it needs 350W PSU minimum. I run it off a 300W.

 

[DoctorKratos]

Thank you very much for your answer and I did search up the model number as well as open up my pc and checked to see if it was 500W and it was.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Yes then it should work for sure. Just glad to be able to help.
Just to explain one point encase you have been reading other forums about PSU. A lot of people go into detail about efficiency and worry that if the PSU isn't efficient enough it will not power the system because it is not efficient enough. There is a big common miss conception that, for example, a 500w PSU that is 80% efficient will only be able to supply 400w of power, and the other 20% is lost in heat. The truth is that a 500w PSU that is 80% efficient will pull 600w of power from the wall outlet at most, but 100w is lost as heat. I see people make this mistake all the time and wanted to make sure if you had seen this that you knew the truth.

So as long as the watts used by the stuff inside of your computer is equal to or less than 500w, or whatever PSU you have at the time, it will work.

Unless you have a further question about this, please mark a comment as the correct answer.

 

[DoctorKratos]

I'm sorry, I wanted to mark your comment as the correct answer but I made this thread a discussion in the first place and it doesn't seem I can do that for this.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Oh lol its cool. I didn't know there were more than one type of thread on here. I just always browse through "unanswered" threads when I am on here and so many times see threads that are finished and not marked answered so I try to encourage people to close them. Thats okay though

Enjoy your new card!

 

[DoctorKratos]

Ok, thanks and I will hopefully as soon as I get it.