Community weekly poll: How many watts is your main computer's power supply?
- 4/26/06 3:52 PM
obaut pc watts
by Carol0311 - 4/30/06 5:57 AM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
i have HPpavilion w5151.uk pc please tel mi hov many watts may main computer pover supply? thankyou
STOP EVERYTHING!! one of my pc's has a whopping
by theandy83 - 4/30/06 8:43 AM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
90 watts!!
(its a 386 running win 1.0-2.4 and win95 for exploring reasons)
oh and my celeron has 200watts
powersupply
by apart2long - 4/30/06 2:13 PM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
500w silverstone,component built
430 Watts in a clone P4 2.4 GHz
by mjlelievre - 4/30/06 3:15 PM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
The computer is a clone with an MRI motherboard with P4 2.4 GHz CPU, 1 ASUS Video Card (w/ 64 MB of memory), 1.5GB DRR400 memory, 2 Seagate 160GB hard disks, 1 Liteon DVD reader, 1 Pioneer 09 DVD Burner.
Main Computer = HP Pavilion a530n
by medicman615 - 4/30/06 5:58 PM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
I have a good old (at least in my experience and for my requirements) HP Pavilion a530n with an AMD Athlon 64 XP 3200+ CPU running at 2.0 GHz with 400 MHz FSB, the standard issue ASUS K8N8X-LA Diablo MB, 1.5 GB PC2700 RAM (1GB + 512MB sticks), NVIDIA nForce3 150 SPP chipset, a 200 GB Ultra DMA HD, DVD+R/RW, CDROM, floppy, and a GeForce FX5200XT (Lancer) AGP 8X graphics card with 128 MB DDR video memory.
As to the PSU, it is the standard HP 300W power supply that came installed.
I have an HP USB printer attached, and have often wondered if my power supply for this computer was underpowered, but was afraid to go tinkering around with it. Will my computer "fry" if I replace the power supply with one rated at a higher wattage?
What advantages are there to having more available power? I've heard computer makers often cut corners to save money, and that the PSU is one of the common places to "go low". Is this true, and should I replace my standard PSU with a higher quality, higher wattage one?
medicman615
300 watt PSU
by Dave_H - 4/30/06 9:43 PM In reply to: Main Computer = HP Pavilion a530n by medicman615Based on the information you've given, and plugging in the numbers as best I can (you didn't mention having any PCI cards in use) to the eXtreme PSU Calculator I linked to above, it looks like your system pulls approximately 250 watts, leaving 50 watts of overhead, which is good. (just for good measure, I plugged in a 56K PCI modem and two 80mm cooling fans)
If you were to start adding hard drives, or upgrade your video card or CPU, you would probably want to upgrade the power supply to prevent bootup problems or random reboots when you are doing things that stress the system.
While I do believe that one of the places manufacturers cut corners is on the PSU, yours appears to be sized to the system exactly as it went out the door. Upgrading won't fry anything, because the power supply doesn't ''push'' power the system isn't asking for; if you aren't going to upgrade or add anything, you should be in good shape.
As to the USB printer, it has its own power supply and the USB port in this case isn't being asked to do anything other than supply low current signaling. It's only when you use devices whose sole source of power is the USB port that this enters the power equation.
power supply
by bitsbyter - 4/30/06 6:35 PM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
500 watts p4 asus motherboard
450 Asus Blue Tru power - Athlon 64 1.8
by spokane - 5/1/06 11:54 PM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
I had the same symptoms as the letterwriter. My tech shop had re-installed windows and it kept happening. Checked out the M-board but he kept coming back to either a bad circuit in the two year old 330w supply or a harness problem from it. I replaced it with the above unit which, with the components onboard, leaves me at least a 200w ceiling to spare.
It seems to have cured the problem, at least that one. Now I only get ''driver stop'' errors or something like that.
Go for the highest power you can get.
by fiqqer - 5/3/06 4:55 PM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
Many of the problems I have experienced - other than virus ones are power ones. People have been upgrading their computers and not realising that as they add components they need more power. As you add peripherals - either through usb or via cards the power supply which originally came with the computer is no longer able to cope. The power supply that came with the case is usually a bog standard one which can cope with a few additional peripherals - you start adding memory, printer, card readers cd/dvd drive and eventually the computer will fail. I have seen new PCs with 250 watts. That is fine if you never want to upgrade the pc but the moment you change to a new graphics card and the PC will start behaving unreliably.
Minimum should be 350, more reasonably 450 but if you want to make sure you can add the latest of everything my recommendation is 550. Your PC will love you for it.
Upgrading your power supply
by Dave_H - 5/3/06 8:08 PM In reply to: Go for the highest power you can get. by fiqqer"Just put in 550 watts" sounds easy enough, but as the articles I've quoted above show, many top-line name-brand PSU's aren't able to output what is on the side decal!
"Going for the max" can also cost more than half of what some people have invested in their computers considering PC Power & Cooling now offers a 1000 watt PSU. It's the best out there, but also several hundred dollars US, and way more power than a lot of people need. This is why it is important that people do actual research and then vote with their wallet.
Very few facilities can do the actual testing required to put PSU's through their paces, but I bet if the manufacturers had their feet held to the fire you might see more honesty in labeling. Not likely to happen though, because the manufacturers know how hard it is to disprove what they are advertising...
needed more power to be stable
by xcarcraft - 5/18/06 11:35 AM In reply to: How many watts is your main computer's power supply? by Marc Bennett
looks like I need more power to be stable so I'm going from a 400watt middle of the run psu to a high end Antec 550watt psu. I'll see if that fixes my rebooting issues!
Asus A8n32 sli
opteron 170 duel core
XFX 7900GTX 512meg gpu
pioneer 110 dvd burner
Aopen dvd rom
WD 80 gig pata
corsair pc 3700 ram 1gig
3.5" floppy
philips 190b 19" LCD
logitec mouse
microsoft keyboard
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
