PSU Power Usage?

Rezident · 9 Feb 2009 at 19:28

Trying to upgrade my brother's Dell (Dimension 4700 P4 3.0, 512Mb ram, radeon X300).

He only games at 1024 x 768 so I thought 2Gb ram plus a radeon 4670 would give him a cheap boost. He says his Dell PSU is only 305W and it has no extra power connectors so the 4670 looks like one of the better cheap cards with no extra power connector requirements but it says it needs a 400W PSU.

Using a PSU calculator (including the 4670) the load power consumption is still around less than 200W, so his PSU should be ok shouldn't it?

95thrifles · 9 Feb 2009 at 19:43

They always overstate the required wattage, so its certtainly worth giving it a go, the only problem might be the dell PSU might not put out enough amps across the 12V rail(s), no harm in trying though

Kennysevenfold · 9 Feb 2009 at 20:04

95thrifles said:
no harm in trying though

yeah untill the power supply blows, and takes the new graphics card with it.

i would recomend against it mate :eek:

just wait till you can get a decent psu to match

95thrifles · 9 Feb 2009 at 20:09

Not particuarly likely if only due to insufficient ampage, that would only happen if it fails catastrophically which is very unlikely to happen

bremen1874 · 9 Feb 2009 at 20:23

According to the specs that PSU has two 12V 18A rails with a maximum combined power of 264W.

If the OPs calculated 200W load is correct then I would have thought it would be okay.

Rezident · 9 Feb 2009 at 20:47

bremen1874 said:
According to the specs that PSU has two 12V 18A rails with a maximum combined power of 264W.

If the OPs calculated 200W load is correct then I would have thought it would be okay.

Yeah it's less than 200W so it should be ok? Cheers.