psu wattage advice

djrobbiepaul

djrobbiepaul

djrobbiepaul

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Joined
4 Mar 2011
Posts
33
Hi guys,

I'm after a little advice on what wattage psu I shud be using
My system is as follows
Amd phenom x3 8850
4 gig RAM 2x2 gb
ATI radeon Hd 5670
1x 500gb 7200rpm hard drive
1x dvd/rw drive
1x pci firewire card
Front bay card reader
1x 92mm case fan

I have been running all this on the 250w liteon psu that came as standard in my acer pc for over a year with no problems but I just upgraded the vid card from a geforce 9500gt and I thort I best check I'm still within the limits
 
You're probably alright, but pushing your luck a bit. If it starts switching off under heavy load, that's probably time to get a new supply. Bear in mind that if your current one dies, it may kill everything attached to it. This is why saving money on the psu is a bit of a false economy.
 
Thanks for quick response
Like I say it has been like that for over a yeah and sometimes I can be on games for 3-4 hours and its never gone off on me
I have tried a couple of psu calculators and on 1 of them I meet the minimum but not the recommended that's why I thort I aid ask
 
using a bottom end psu is like playing russian rulette

its up to you if you want to play but id advise getting something a little better the coolermaster 500w @ £34.99, corsair 430w or ocz 500w both @ £38.99 would be more than enough!

tbh id take the ocuk swift 450w over what you have as there both unbranded poo
 
Well the psu can't be that bad. I brought the computer in 2008 and I upgraded most of it just over a year ago and its still going
In my other rig I had 2 ocz go in the same year so I stay clear of them now.
So in my experience this liteon 1 that came as standard in my acer pc is better than ocz
 
djrobbiepaul said:
Well the psu can't be that bad. I brought the computer in 2008 and I upgraded most of it just over a year ago and its still going
In my other rig I had 2 ocz go in the same year so I stay clear of them now.
So in my experience this liteon 1 that came as standard in my acer pc is better than ocz
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thats an exeption to the rule and not the rule! There is a lot of threads about corsair psu's getting rma'd and dying yet there the highest reccomended psu on this forum

The fact is running a psu at full capacity is never good for it regardles and cheap poo psu's even worse!

you came here asking for advice, I can only give advice I cant make you change the psu so its your decision if you change it or cheap out and take a chance on breaking all your components.

I await other members comments on this to see if they would do the same in your situation
 
My advice was for do I need more watts not to be told that my current psu is cheap poo and that I am risking damaging all my components even though that so called poo psu is still working fine after 3 years of use.
If it turns out I could do with more wattage then I will get a new psu but I will not have ocz due to bad experience with them in the past and also the corsair 430w u mentioned has a lot of bad reviews
 
Defiantly get more power on the go. Stay clear of OCZ, my friends OCZ blew on him and hes now lost a PCI-E slot and all his temperature monitors on his motherboard. Corsair are the best PSU makers out there. 430w minimum, but 500w to be very happy.
 
The HD5670 uses about 20 watts more than the 9500gt. I wouldn't be too concerned. If you were happy running a 250W Liteon PSU before then you'll still be fine, I'd imagine. I suppose it all depends on how much 12v power the Liteon PSU can provide. Cheap PSUs tend to rate the PSUs on their total rail wattage and have lower a 12v rail than good ones.

The extra 2 Amps of 12v required may push it over the edge. 2 Amps may not seem like much but a cheap 250W supply may only have 12 Amps total available.
 
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The problem is that wattage doesn't mean a great deal. Two 500W power supplies can be nothing like each other. That your 250W one isn't dead yet is commendable, and as it's an oem unit there is less motivation to dishonestly write big numbers on it.

However I don't think you've taken a multimeter to it, let alone a psu testing station, so I'm not convinced you can say it's working fine. The computer turns on and works, but the psu could be coming very close to out of spec. The 12V line needs to be within 10.8V and 13.2V before it breaches the atx spec, if nothing else I think you should measure how close to this you're coming under load.

I think the consensus is going to be to change it, as quite a few people on here have had the magic smoke come out of the back only to find everything is now dead. I've had an 800W OCZ die, and all that happened was an led on the back went from green to red. All the components were fine.
 
So it seems that I should change the psu then.
If this is the case then can someone point me in the right direction as to what wattage I would need as I have tried a few psu calculators but I don't know how accurate these are
 
JonJ678 said:
However I don't think you've taken a multimeter to it, let alone a psu testing station, so I'm not convinced you can say it's working fine. The computer turns on and works, but the psu could be coming very close to out of spec. The 12V line needs to be within 10.8V and 13.2V before it breaches the atx spec, if nothing else I think you should measure how close to this you're coming under load. .
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I believe you're misquoting the -12V DC line tolerances. The +12V DC tolerances are : +11.40 V to +12.60 V
 
You're quite correct Sir. I had 10% in mind for the tolerance, and that probably does come from confusing the +12V rail with the -12V one. Thank you :)

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Cupra said:
its up to you if you want to play but id advise getting something a little better the coolermaster 500w @ £34.99, corsair 430w or ocz 500w both @ £38.99 would be more than enough!
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I pretty much agree with this guy, 400W at £40 sounds about right. The Corsair CX400W seems to be end of life now, which is a terrible shame. The 430W model which replaced it might be as good, or it might not be. Johhny Guru do exceptionally good reviews of power supplies, though it might be slightly dry reading.
 
djrobbiepaul said:
According to my psu the 12v rail has 16 amp
So would that be ok
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Hey that's better than I expected to be honest.

16 Amps is near enough 200W at 12v.

This is such a low power system I believe you don't really need to update the power supply. A cheap OEM unit that provides 80% of it's power to the 12v rail can't be all bad.
 
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