macca said:
Hi,
I have a Gigabyte GA-8IK110 motherboard,
a Pentium 4C 3.2GHz (Northwood core 130nm) CPU,
2GB PC3200 RAM
2 IDE hard disks and a dual DVD rewriter.
I am getting a Gainward GeForce 7800GS+ 512MB DDR3 AGP Dual DVI TV Out
graphics card.
I'm not sure what else i will get.
I currently have an Enermax 430Watt PSU. Is this PSU adequate?
If not can anyone recommend a good PSU?
Cheers
Macca
Processor is 82W or so.
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL6WG
82W/12V * (1/0.90) = 7.59A from 12V (at 90% Vcore efficiency).
Two hard drives 0.6A * 2 = 1.2A from 12V
One optical drive 12V @ 1.5A max (likely during spinup or burn)
Cooling fans - allocate 12V @ 0.5A or read the fan labels.
7800GS+ AGP. Now that is a tough one.
I'll have to pick the 7800GT as a rough equivalent. Purely
so I can use power measurements from xbitlabs. That gives
me 57W at 12V, and it is always possible your 7800GS+ uses
less than that, so this is a pessimistic estimate.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gpu-consumption2006_5.html
Total so far, for 12V is: 7.59 + 2*0.6 + 1.5 + 0.5 + 57W/12V = 15.54A
This Enermax supply looks a bit weak on +12V for this job.
http://groups.google.ca/group/uw.forsale/browse_frm/thread/67352fa0c741da64/72568cf1327659cf
Check the label on the side of the supply, and see what the 12V
rating is. I would want to see maybe 12V @ 18A total rating to have
a bit of room between the load and the power supply max rating.
If my video card estimate is off a bit, then perhaps slightly
less current is required.
The above estimation method assumes each component draws max power
at the same time. When you game, the processor and video card
may not run at exactly 100% of their rated spec, so the
15.54 amps listed above could be on the high side.
Paul
