Random said:
According to the website below, my PSU needs to be a 400W one. However,
mine is an Antec Truepower 350W PSU.
A 350W TruePower? Are you sure that it's not a 330W or 380W TruePower
or a 350W SmartPower/Solution Series?
The worksheet at that website overestimates even worst-case power
needs.
http://takaman.jp is better, but even it shoots too high, xcept
the +3.3V, where it's often way too low.
How likely am I to need 400W and what will happen if I try to do so on
my PC?
Not very, according to people who've taken measurements. One person
with a 64-bit AMD, fairly fast graphics, and four HDs (two of them
10,000 RPM) measured 400W max at the wall outlet, meaning the PSU
probably put out no more than 300W. But you need to provide more
information about your equipment before people can estimate your power
consumption -- what CPU & speed? How many drives and what kind? What
graphics card chipset?
How do I test if my PC has enough power? I don't have access to a
multimeter. I was hoping for software that could do that.
There's software like Motherboard Monitor and SpeedFan that uses the
mobo hardware to read temps, voltages, and fan RPMs, but that hardware
is often inaccurate, and sometimes the software will add to this by not
configuring itself right. However it should still be able to check for
changes in voltages, and you want to compare the voltages when the PSU
is lightly loaded and when it's heavily loaded. Lighten the load by
removing unneeded devices, like extra drives, and slow the CPU and bus
speeds as much as possible. If you have a fast graphics card, try to
replace it with a slow one. Then note the voltages while the system is
idling. Repeat the test with your normal configuration and while the
system is running a torture test, and if the voltages are more than
about 3-5% lower than in the first case, then maybe the PSU is being
overloaded.
For reliable readings you really need a digital multimeter, and even a
cheapo $2 from Harbor Freight will be accurate to about 1%, although
some cheapos use watch batteries, which don't last long and can be
costly to replace compared to 9V, AA, or AAA batteries. Wal-mart,
Radio Shack, and Sears sell meters, and the latter two stores have
models that can feed their readings into a computer's RS-232 serial
port so you can see how voltages change over time. Some meters can
also record temperature, but that may not be particularly useful for
computer testing if the temperature probe is internal, as it sometimes
is.
