Am I demanding too much from the PSU?

[Jamie1994]

It's a 700W nobrand (CiT if that means anything to anyone) PSU.
Says it has dual 12v rails whatever that means. and is ATX 12v 2.2 compat, whatever that means as well.


http://i.imgur.com/x8z3z.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/5S3cC.jpg Sorry about this pictures, ****** iPhone camera.

Here is a crudely drawn diagram of my cable set up at the moment.

http://i.imgur.com/wCO0t.png

I have 2 spare sata cables in that picture, I have 1 SATA->MOLEX converter I can use to hook up that IDE drive, the cd drive will have to remain unplugged until I get another connector.

Is all these connectors and other ghetto rigging going to overload the PSU or is it safe to connect this drive?

 

[Jamie1994]

What are the actual specs of the rig? I would never recommend a nobrand at all as there really is no way of telling how reliable it actually is

Well my last nobrand PSU died 2 days ago so I decided to buy another nobrand PSU (had the old one for about 2 years with no problems).

It's a ****** old rig thats due for upgrading.

E8400 (currently not OC'd)
4GB DDR2
Gigabyte EP43-DS3L
Radeon 6950 2GB
OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
Samsung SATA HDD
Some IDE MOLEX HDD

I'd link to the PSU but it's not from OCUK.

 

[Jamie1994]

CiT (Color IT) are a ****tily made PSU. Granted I had one for my first computer they aren't that good.

If it's 700W it might be 350-300W, should still be good to power some things.

Eh it cost peanuts, I just need it to last a few months and not fry the rest of my components in the process.

 

[Jamie1994]

A 700W **** PSU could draw 1500W from the mains due to poor efficiency! It would certainly make a lot of heat too, plus the component quality would be poor. The power stability would be poor too.
When you buy a new rig, certainly invest in a decent power supply.
I have a 750W Corsair PSU (only because it was on TWO and the same price as the 650W version!) and am confident that it will be able to power all my rigs for many years to come.

I certainly would not run a 6950 from a cheap PSU, no matter how high the wattage.

Hmm, guess I'll leave the IDE drive and CD drive unplugged for now then, I dont have any other GPU to plug in other than the 6950 so it'll have to stay there. I don't really play many games anymore and the ones I do won't tax the GPU so fingers crossed it doesn't fry it.

 

[Jamie1994]

TBH, the HDD and optical drive will only draw a few watts, even at maximum load - so you aren't really reducing your load too much.

Instead it is your 200W HD 6950 graphics card which will be drawing the majority of the power.

Since you have a really poor quality PSU I would strongly suggest you invest in a good quality PSU before trying to run this graphics card in your system. You may only want to run it for a few months, but if your PSU dies before then you will have to replace it anyway and you also run the risk of other more expensive components being taken out if the PSU does die (like the motherboard, CPU and GPU).

For a replacement PSU, I would go for something like this at a minimum.

Ok then, I'll grab a good OCZ/Corsair PSU as soon as possible.