Minimum wattage for i5 3450

Roalith · 22 Jul 2013 at 15:55

Hi Chaps,

After some advice - I'm planning on upgrading my HTPC shortly to an i5-3450 with an Asus P8H61-I. There will also be a 2TB mechanical 5400rpm drive, an SSD and a slimline BD-ROM attached.

I currently have a Compucase 8K01 box (http://www.compucase-hec.co.uk/pccase_mini-itx_8k.htm) which has a 120 watt PSU.

I'm stroking my beard as to whether 120 watt will actually be enough to push the entire box running at full load. I have a sneaking suspicion the answer will be no, and I'll need a beefier PSU.

Any ideas?

teppic · 22 Jul 2013 at 16:30

It's borderline. At flat out stress testing you'd probably just be too short. But since people don't really do that, at a normal load you'd see a maximum power draw of under 100W and even less for HTPC stuff, so as long as the PSU is a decent one, it'd probably be ok in real use.

Roalith · 22 Jul 2013 at 18:08

That's what I'm slightly worried about. Planning on running a minecraft server on it, and that can be quite stressy under full load...

teppic · 22 Jul 2013 at 18:27

I was going to suggest one of the 35W TDP processors but I guess you want the extra performance?

It'd probably still be ok - a stress tested CPU uses a lot more power than a fully loaded one under normal circumstances, but I can see why you'd be concerned.

Roalith · 23 Jul 2013 at 08:47

Thanks for the help Teppic, will give it a try with the 120. Worst comes to the worst it'll be new case/psu time...

Roalith · 1 Aug 2013 at 16:55

In the end I went for an i3 3225 with an MSI B75IA-E33. With a Samsung Vertex 3, a 2 TB Samsung HDD and a slimline Blu-Ray drive, everything seems to be perfectly stable with an hour or two of Prime 95 on the 120 watt PSU