Psu Recommendations

[piirate1919]

I need to upgrade my psu, and was wondering if anyone could recommend some good ones. I was thinking of this one. MSI TurboStream 460W BTX. What do you guys think? Dont want to skimp idont wanna fry anything but want to stay $100 and under. Intel 945p pentium d 2.8 1gb ram 7300le 500gb and 2 dvd drives. reason for psu is upgrade ordered 8800 gts 500gb (wd) 2gb dualchannel memory (Corsair). I got xps400 btx. I'm not sure how to figure out how much power i need. Any help will be appreciated.

 

[sghiznaneck]

You might want to bump the power supply up to a 600 watt. Many people swear by Antec. I have been using Ultra for over 2 years now and have never had a problem with one. I upgraded in December and installed a 700 watt Ultra because I also installed an XFX 8800 GTX. The 8800 GTS doesn't call for as much power as the GTX flavor, so a 600 watt psu should give you plenty of juice with some headroom to spare.

 

[Grafficks]

I agree, something around the 600W range should suffice.
I am also running an Ultra power supply in my machine. Their PSU's are pretty decent.
Other good brands include Antec, FSP, Enermax, Thermaltake, Seasonic, OCZ, Cooler Master.
Make sure you get a good and reliable brand for your power supply! This is a very important part of your computer.

 

[piirate1919]

Are atx btx psu interchangeable? Can i put atx into xps400?

 

[pdyckman@comcas]

I run a 8800 GTS 320mb and use an Ultra XFinity 600 watt. Has (2) 12volt rails. Works real good.

 

[raybay]

You must carefully check your specs with any Dell machine. Some models of the XPS can be ruined by an incorrect power supply... I do not know if their XPS 400 is one of those. If you cannot figger it out, Call, don't email, Dell Tech support with your service tag and ask them.

 

[piirate1919]

Got the card about a week ago and running fine with stock psu no crashes as of yet. Running all games on highest settings with no prob. Only thing is I haven't added the second drive. Thinking of sending itback and getting 2x250
so i can run raid 0 and turning 500 I got right now to an external. Hope this helps someone, will post again when I set-up raid.

 

[raybay]

When you evaluate the second drive, also evalutate your cables and connectors. There is definitely a concern with that second drive and how it is configured.

 

[piirate1919]

What is the concern? Not sure I understand what you're saying? Will raid 0 give me any performance gains?