420 Watts for Upgrade

liquor_mortis · 25 Jan 2008 at 23:26

Hello,

Seeking an answer to a perennial question: I'm currently running an opteron 165 plus an X1950pro AGP on an OCZ 420W supply, and am thinking about upgrading to Q6600 + 8800GTS 512 plus the necessary changes to motherboard & memory, all other components remaining the same.

Should I include a new power supply in the order, or will the current PSU be man enough? The sticker on the side says it's good for 30A on the 12V rail, with a total power load of 360W. What do you think?

Ben M · 25 Jan 2008 at 23:41

What brand is the psu? My first instinct would be that it probably would... But if i was going to be running £300+ of brand new hardware, I'd want to know that my psu was safe as houses.

Oh and how many optical and HDD drives are you running?

And welcome to the forums =]

liquor_mortis · 25 Jan 2008 at 23:48

It's an OCZ PowerStream, I'm running 2 SATA & 1 IDE harddrives plus an IDE DVDRW.

Thanks

.

Biohazard · 25 Jan 2008 at 23:58

It won't be 30 amps combined.

liquor_mortis · 26 Jan 2008 at 00:03

I don't understand you, do you mean that the load won't be 30A combined, or the max output won't be?

Edit: Never mind, after some thought (during a quick visit to the pub), I found this calculator http://web.aanet.com.au/SnooP/psucalc.php which seems to indicate that while 420W will be sufficient to run the system, there will be no headroom for overclocking.

Thanks All.