Currrently I use a sparkle 400watt P/S. Yes it is massive but I can plug anyting into it and still have power left.

Take care

Boeingfixer

Absolutely! Don't let the nay-sayers change your mind either... The two most wattage hungry components of your computer are the CPU and the video card. These are both areas of which you are being very conservative in...

A 1.2Ghz Morgan certainly is fairly tame when it comes to wattage (Compared to when people first started appearing with power problems in Athlon systems). Your video card probably pulls about 5-10 watts at most, where systems that experience PSU problems are generally using much more (20-30 watts).

Also, when you calculated your wattage, there is likely a large cushion due to aproximation...

Lastely Truffles.. Don't use your TV for a montior! Just don't do it. The max resolution you can use is 640x480 and the text is unbearable. You are also very likely going to suffer from eye strain and headache if you use it too long. It might be cool for gaming (Not even that because the color is usually bleached out and the refresh rate is a pain), but anything else requires a monitor. I sincerely suggest you save your time (And possibly money) by not hooking up a TV.

#2/ i was wondering . . . say i use . . . 300W . . . would the system consume 300W of power ? or the power that is needed to run the system ?

No truffles...If your system needs on 240W to run...then only 240W will be consumed.

just make sure its amd aproved...then if it blows up you can blame them.

lol ....

A good 250W PSU will run your kit easily...

An article on how to make sure that the PSU installed in a computer is up to the job. There is more to this now than most people might realise. -

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/guides/power_supply/

Eric,

http://www.legge40.freeserve.co.uk/BuyerBeware.htm

Havent read all 20+ posts, but even if this has been posted, it's worth posting again.

A comprehensive run down of power supplies here: http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/index.html should answer any and all of your questions.

Don't buy a cheap PSU, as you'll regret it. If it ever fails it will likely take out many of your other components along with it. I've seen this happen at least 3 times in the past.

Cheap PSU's don't always have good output protection (over-voltage, over-current, etc.) to protect attached devices. If you buy anything other than a respectable brand, then you might be ok, or you might end up regreting it.

Good electronics design and quality components cost money, so cheapies are an extra risk your valuable equipment doesn't need.

Also, the PSU wattage rating is not the power that is supplied to the load, which is often considerably less, so don't go by simple wattage ratings and try to read some of the reviews that others have kindly provided links for.

Indeed Nic. Given that the power supply - ahem - supplies power to the entire system, one could say that it is the most important choice for a builder to make.

I agree, followed closely by a good mainboard.

I once lost 2 hard drives, a CDR drive, and a DVDROM to a cheap PSU that appeared to be working, but was producing voltage spikes on start-up. I didn't discover the problem till it was too late, and had to replace all the drives and the PSU. It worked out to be a costly mistake, and I lost all my data into the bargain as it wasn't backed-up. I now ONLY use respectable brands like Enermax.

There are some good PSUs around that are reasonably priced, but cheap ones should always be avoided. The better ones tend to be quite heavy, whereas cheapies are relatively light. While this is not the recommended way to tell if a PSU is good or not, you'll find that ALL the good ones ARE heavy. Cheapies are designed to be low cost and that inevitably means fewer components and low weight to save on shipping costs.

All the latest top spec CPUs (and GPUs) now require better power regulation, as well as lots of power, and this will become even more important as time goes on.

A very good reference for explaining PSU ratings and the importance of how those ratings break down into the current supplied by each rail.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/power/sup/output_Power.htm

Nice to see an old latin enemy bringing itself down

Antec is my PSU of choice...quality stuff, and they really stand behind their products...I run a 550W unit, but it's a more robust system I am powering...

I have a A7S333 MoBo and Amd 2.0GHZXP WITH 1G MEMORY what kind of psu watts should I use

How many hard drives and case fans do you have? I would reccomend a quality 350W PSU unless you have in excess of like 5 hard drives and fans.

I have a 300watt power supply, im also planning on buying a case fan and some more RAM. Do you think my wattage is cutting it close a bit? (System specs in profile)

Thanks

Hey, just a slight....."wondering".....a got this pc (one im using now) about 3 months ago..it was sed to be in the high range group of pcs and all, the specs are at the bottom bit of the page (were u put ur sig and that) and i was wondering why it came with such a low power suply wattage and was wondering if i got it wrong.....i looked on the side of the psu and it ses something like "max out: 250watt" is there another way to find out what it is? anyway...as u can see my comp has one HDD some network card in a pci socked, a radeon 9200 128 mb ( ) 3000+ AMD Athlon xp and 512MB of RAM.


im looking to upgrading my graphics card to something way better that what i have now.....i was thinking the Radeon 9800 256mb and was wondering if the power suply would cope wiv it.....dunno what make it is....soooo....any help would be nice.....

Yo, me agen...ive been looking around and just decided to get a new psu....how hard can it be to plug in a few wires...anyway, i come across this site...seems to be good prices.....but what one should i go for....im not looking on paying £100 for a psu...so something around £50 to £65 will be more like it for me......

Heres the link:

http://www.planetmicro.co.uk/results...Units&images=1

I have 450mhz
256mb
win xp
3dfx 8mb video
tv 2000 video in
2 ethernet cards
Hoontech (Professional sound soundcard)
2 usb 2.0
dvd
cd
(All except for 2 ISA slots are full)
SUNPOWER 250W


I upgraded my computer a bit (installed RAM and new cards).
When I turned the power on, the BIOS screen worked as normally exept that I heard sound coming from the speakers (like an alarm sound) for 10 seconds. Then the computer shutdown and smoke came out from the PC.
What happened and what could the extent of damage be?

I would definately say you are way overtaxing that 250watt PSU, and if finally crapped out with all that stuff hooked up to it. I'd simply suggest getting a new 400watt Enermax or something similar, you will be happy with a name brand PSU, instead of a generic one.

BTW
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