HIS 4870 power

[daz87uk]

Hi, I just brought a 4870 but forgot about the dual power needed
Could I use the 1x 6pin Rail and a molex adapter for the other? pc is fitted with the "extreme power 460watt Coolmaster" nothing much in the pc so it should be powerfull enough.

eXtreme Power 460W PSU
AMD Phenom X3 Triple Core 8450 2.1GHz Socket AM2+
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 780G Socket AM2+
Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB Hard Drive
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW Dual Layer Internal SATA
and 4Gb of OCZ gold

 

[Stuart Gibson]

4870 power consumption under load is approaching 300 watts.
Your Phenom 8450 under load uses about 75 watts.
Hard drive 10 watts (estimated)
DVD drive 10 watts (estimated)
4Gb ram, say another 10 watts (estimated)
Motherboard 10-20 watts (estimated)

What about cooling fans ? Say 1 in, 1 out, 1 CPU, 15-30 watts

Thats a total of 455 watts.

I would say you might get away with it, but I wouldn't chance it. I have melted motherboard power cables before because the system was drawing too much current.

Get a good 600 watt PSU to give yourself some headroom.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Yes, thats what the adapters are for, but that PSU might not be enough.

 

[pastymuncher]

You may get away with it but it will put a big load on the psu. The rig in my siggy plus a pair of WD 320GB AAKS sata ll hdd's, sata dvdrw, Zalman ZM-MFC2 multifunction controller and 5x fans draws a max of 274w at the wall when running Orthos and fur stability test (100% load on both CPU and GPU) at the same time. Something you are not likely to do in normal use.

 

[daz87uk]

Thanks for your replys, I have looked into it a bit more now. I know its a push but by my readings most of the bellow calculations are over reads "(o)" at max power ussage.

Cpu Max 75W
Graphics Max 275W
Motherboard estimate Max 25W (over)
Ram max 30W
HDD is about 8W so call it 10W (over)
sys Fan Max 3W
CPU Max 3W

so with some over reads and at total power it comes to 421Watts, it unlikely to run at full power. the pc was made mainly for my Gf who only plays Sims 3 lol and I was going to install say COD4 and GRID Etc so I cant really see it running at full. graphics was overkill but it was a bargin

 

[Widge]

I'm the same boat wattage wise, but have managed to source a modular corsair @ £50 for the PCI-e cables.

Still waiting for it though, so mildly tempted to unplug my unused optical drives and get a molex adaptor to test the thing out!

 

[daz87uk]

Just to say all is working well, psu seems to be working fine. Played Fallout 3 on full, ati tool displays 1000+ FPS

windows rating now is

Cpu 6.0
Ram 7.1
Graphics 6.8
WD HDD 5.9 << overall sub score