200 watt psu's are enough?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter McVries
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Peter McVries

Was offered a shuttle machine recently which got me reading up on those.
Seems most have just a 200 watt psu depite being relatively decent machines
2+ghz, 512mb Ram etc. I know video/sound/lan is usually integrated and
there's only one DVD/CDRW drive but 200 watts seems *awful* low after
reading so much on here about 300 watts being minimum etc.

Is there something special about these psu's?

Comments welcome :)
 
Peter McVries said:
Was offered a shuttle machine recently which got me reading up on those.
Seems most have just a 200 watt psu depite being relatively decent machines
2+ghz, 512mb Ram etc. I know video/sound/lan is usually integrated and
there's only one DVD/CDRW drive but 200 watts seems *awful* low after
reading so much on here about 300 watts being minimum etc.

Is there something special about these psu's?

Comments welcome :)

I would want at least 300 watts.
Click to expand...
 
Peter McVries said:
Was offered a shuttle machine recently which got me reading up on those.
Seems most have just a 200 watt psu depite being relatively decent machines
2+ghz, 512mb Ram etc. I know video/sound/lan is usually integrated and
there's only one DVD/CDRW drive but 200 watts seems *awful* low after
reading so much on here about 300 watts being minimum etc.

Is there something special about these psu's?

Comments welcome :)
Click to expand...


i've got an amd-1200 with 768 megs of ram
a geo force video card
dvd player
net card and modem

been running the machine about 14 hours a day for the past year with
a 200 watts psu no problems but i'm definately going to get a bigger
supply
one of these days <g>
 
I personally don't use anything less than 400 watts. It gives me room to
add devices in the future without worrying about upgrades the PSU. One
thing I do not like doing down the road when perfoming upgradres, aside from
the motherboard, is replacing the PSU. The M/B and PSU I dislike having to
change in any upgrade.

~ Adrian ~
 
Adrian said:
I personally don't use anything less than 400 watts. It gives me room to
add devices in the future without worrying about upgrades the PSU. One
thing I do not like doing down the road when perfoming upgradres, aside from
the motherboard, is replacing the PSU. The M/B and PSU I dislike having to
change in any upgrade.
Click to expand...


I saw some test results somewhere; A mega kick ass system running
everything at the same time was drawing 175 watts peak. It would seem
that anything over 200 watts is overkill.
 
Greetings...

the computer when the new PS was installed. What is important is the
quality of the output of the PS. If it is a good quality PS, 200 W will do
just fine.
Click to expand...


A lot of us knew this way back in 1991 when our 225W PSU's would drive 4 very power
hungry hard drives, 2 floppy drives (that we actually used every day!!) Hand scanner,
keyboard, printer, Video (EGA) a host of power hungry ISA cards from memory cards, floppy
card controller, hard disk controller, IO controllers, sound cards, multiple modems (3), 2
analog joysticks, and then in a few years, we were still stuffing in CD drives and then
power hungry new fangled 3d graphics cards!! All into those old 225W cases....

NNTP isn't very much different from the old BBS's.. In fact, it's pretty much the same
without the 1 hour time limit.. The conversations are the same.... ;)

Remember there was no Green machine spec then... No power down or idle - and every card
was a juice slurping monolithic monster compared to today's very miniaturized
electronics..

Not very many people today have ever even seen a ($3000) full length memory board fully
populated with individual memory chips. Can you even imagine dropping one of those
monsters into your current system? (just to get an amazing 50 Megs of EMS Memory??)

I'm not worried about my 300W PSU not being able to supply power....
 
Peter McVries said:
Was offered a shuttle machine recently
Seems most have just a 200 watt psu depite being
relatively decent machines 2+ghz, 512mb Ram etc.
there's only one DVD/CDRW drive but 200 watts seems *awful* low
Click to expand...
Is there something special about these psu's?
Click to expand...

They're probably rated conservatively, unlike the 500W
glow-in-the-dark wonders that sometimes sell for $20, and even the
fastest computers, loaded with the fastest video card and several hard
and optical drives, actually draw less than 300W, with 150-180W being
the typical maximum for most 2 GHz machines. You'll find that the
large PC makers include high quality supplies rated for less power
than what the generic makers use, and PC Power & Cooling, known for
very good supplies, has an online power supply selector that
recommends a fairly modest 275W for most PCs.
 
I have 2 Shuttle SK41G's with AMD XP 2400 oc'd to 2600+ (140fsb), 512meg
DDR, 120gig Maxtors, Pioneer DVD's, one with GF Ti200 & AverDVD capture
card, one with Asus 7700 video.
Ran one of em with two hard drives for a while before getting 120's.

Both work fine.

Don't sweat the PS, it's fine, but DO get "Speed Fan" cause for some reason
the heat controlled fan settings in the bios just don't seem to work and
heat is a REAL problem in the summertime with these little gems.
I had a LAN party this weekend and one of the machines was running at 59deg
Cel constantly and would sometimes reboot till I installed "Speed Fan" and
the CPU fan changed from MAX 2600rpm to 3800 and brought the temps down to
56deg range and made it run rock solid :)
 
Conor said:
THe total wattage rating of a PSU is completely irrelevent. It is the
current supply available on the 12V, 5V and 3.3V lines that matters.

--
________________________
Conor Turton
(e-mail address removed)
ICQ:31909763
________________________
Click to expand...
Right and the current required on the +12v, +3.3, +5v lines by the system.
 
But that is what a power supply does. It provides current while
maintaining the correct voltage. The higher the wattage rating, the
higher the current that can be supplied at the correct voltage. To say
that the wattage rating is irrelevant is missing the point.

hawk
 
bear in mind that most of these smaller mobos only have 1 pci slot and/or 1
agp slot, so you wont be filling your machine with loads of add-on cards.
rob.
 
But that is what a power supply does. It provides current while
maintaining the correct voltage. The higher the wattage rating, the
higher the current that can be supplied at the correct voltage. To say
that the wattage rating is irrelevant is missing the point.
Click to expand...
No it isn't. THere are many 300W PSUs that are flaky on AMD systems
because they supply too low a current at 5V.

There's also this little thing called efficiency. A bad PSU has a 65%
efficiency and a good one 0%. Both are rated the same wattage wise.


--
________________________
Conor Turton
(e-mail address removed)
ICQ:31909763
________________________
 
Peter McVries said:
Was offered a shuttle machine recently which got me reading up on those.
Seems most have just a 200 watt psu depite being relatively decent machines
2+ghz, 512mb Ram etc. I know video/sound/lan is usually integrated and
there's only one DVD/CDRW drive but 200 watts seems *awful* low after
reading so much on here about 300 watts being minimum etc.

Is there something special about these psu's?

Comments welcome :)
Click to expand...

Well, I've never used a 200 W PS, but I did once try to build an
Athlon 1400 system with a 140W PS in an old IBM case.... It didn't
work; the Athlon ran too hot, and I'd get a bluescreen after about 1/2
hour. I pulled the MB etc. and put it into a 300W PS case and it
worked OK - still hot as blazes, but no more bluescreens.

IMHO, as you get up to the design's maximum SUSTAINED power draw (as
opposed to the PEAK draw, which is the number the PS is advertised as)
small variations in the voltage would become much more common and may
destabilize some sensitive component, thus causing crashes, etc.... I
think that, given the prices of PS these days, I'd go for 300 - 350 W,
high quality PS.... They're about the same price, dB, idle power
consumption, etc. as the 150-200 W PS's.

Good Luck!
ECM
 
Maybe you have a micro mini with the VIA cpu that uses almost no power and
often has no cpu fan.
 
Was offered a shuttle machine recently which got me reading up on
those. Seems most have just a 200 watt psu depite being relatively
decent machines 2+ghz, 512mb Ram etc. I know video/sound/lan is
usually integrated and there's only one DVD/CDRW drive but 200 watts
seems *awful* low after reading so much on here about 300 watts being
minimum etc.

Is there something special about these psu's?

Comments welcome :)
Click to expand...

I have 3 of the Shuttles. The first one has a 150w power supply, the second
160w and the newest one has 200w. I'm using an AMD XP3000/400, 1gb memory,
ATI Radeon 9800 pro and a 120gb Maxtor hard drive in it. Seems to work
fine. The first two I have had for quite some time and have not had any
problemw with them. The middle one which is a P4 2ghz runs seti 24/7.
 
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