Power Supply

B

Brandonf

Sponsor
Im looking at some new Sony Vio's and would put my old Matrox cards in them to use for trading. The Sony's have a power supply of 250 and someone told me that may not be enough. Anyone know of a good off the shelf computer that would work? Or if this one would.

Thanks
Brandon
 
Quote from Brandonf:

Im looking at some new Sony Vio's and would put my old Matrox cards in them to use for trading. The Sony's have a power supply of 250 and someone told me that may not be enough. Anyone know of a good off the shelf computer that would work? Or if this one would.

Thanks
Brandon
More...

I'm running 4 video cards, 512 Ram P4 1.6 on a Dell with only 250w PSU and it runs just fine.... Dell's tech support even told me NOT to replace the PSU with a larger one. (I don't think that was good advice, however. If that were the case, why would there be all these 500w+ PSUs on the market?)
 
Larger power supplys are necc. for fast 3d game rendering which requires bigger, faster cpus, more ram, bigger faster multiple hd's and 128 video cards all pumping at once. If you're using a somewhat usuall config. of a midlin p4 chip, 512-1k ram, 7200rpm hd and a couple of 32-64bit vid cards to render charts driving 2-4 monitors it will work. It's a little light tho, I would go to a high end 350 watt quiet fan. There can be huge differences in power supplies when they're functioning at the high end of their capacity. Another 30-50 bucks over the price of a cheapie is cheap insurance and will handle whatever you add in the future.
 
Try:

www.pcpowercooling.com

Especially if you have a Dell.
And don't just look at the total amount of wattage that a Power Supply puts out. The key is to look at the individual rails of the power supply:

+3.3V
+5V
+12V

The 3.3V rail supports your AGP Card and your RAM
The 12V rail supports your drives and your processor.

Note: For example, an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro during instense gaming can draw 75 watts, easy!
 
Thanks Waggie945.....I did not know that...I always thought that 400 watt or better was the answer....I think I read that at Tom's Hardware or some site like that a year ago...


Quote from waggie945:

Try:

www.pcpowercooling.com

Especially if you have a Dell.
And don't just look at the total amount of wattage that a Power Supply puts out. The key is to look at the individual rails of the power supply:

+3.3V
+5V
+12V

The 3.3V rail supports your AGP Card and your RAM
The 12V rail supports your drives and your processor.

Note: For example, an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro during instense gaming can draw 75 watts, easy!
More...
 
Thanks for the info. I was not aware of that.

What is the +5V in the middle for?

nitro
Quote from waggie945:

Try:

www.pcpowercooling.com

Especially if you have a Dell.
And don't just look at the total amount of wattage that a Power Supply puts out. The key is to look at the individual rails of the power supply:

+3.3V
+5V
+12V

The 3.3V rail supports your AGP Card and your RAM
The 12V rail supports your drives and your processor.

Note: For example, an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro during instense gaming can draw 75 watts, easy!
More...
 
The +5V Rail soley supports your average PCI card, the Floppy Drive, and a Pentium 3 processor.

The +5V Rail also helps out with a SCSI Controller Card and the Motherboard, with help from the +3.3V Rail as well.

The +5V Rail also helps out the +12V Rail in supporting the CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and Hard Drive be it IDE, Serial ATA, or SCSI.

Note: Remember to allow for roughly 8 watts per 128MB of RAM for your +3.3V Rail ( at peak ).

ie.) My stock Dell Power Supply had a +3.3V Rail that was puny, only able to support 46.2 watts.

As you can see from above, the RAM and AGP Slot are supported by the +3.3V Rail, and if you are using a "gaming" type card with more RAM, the +3.3V Rail can be easily overwhelmed.

My new PC Power& Cooling "Silencer-400" has a +3.3V Rail that supports 132 watts!
 
Waggie interesting stuff. I am building another computer. Want to use a Nexus 3500 quiet power supply. It shows the 3.3 rail as 20.1/28 a. Is that enough for a 128 dual monitor card ?
 
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