Will my PSU be sufficent?

[MikeH]

Hi, just been given a Radeon X1900GT graphics card and would like to install it in my PC. Using on-board graphics at the moment. Will my PSU handle it or can I just get a small dedicated PSU for the card? I'm not a gamer so speed doesn't matter. I would just like to use two monitors for my Sonar recording software ( tracks on one and effects on the other) and possibly Autocad, maybe Photoshop - don't really know the full possibilities until I start using them. I have a home built PC with a 400w psu. It is powering the following:
Asus M4A78LT-M motherboard with AMD Athlon 2 x4 645
2 x 500GB hard drives
2 x DVD/CD re-writers
Echo Midi Mia soundcard
Hauppauge Win-TVR PVR PCI 2
2 x PCI usb x 4 cards (not all sockets in use)
I'm using Windows XP Professional.

Should I find the power consumption of everything in my PC and see how close it is to the 400w psu?

Any advice would be welcome.

 

[muckshifter]

That graphics card will consume around 75watts ... I roughly calculate your system would need around 350watts ... I'd run it, but I'd also be aware of the possible limitations.

You would need to replace, not add a second PSU, if you wished to provide a better overhead.

 

[MikeH]

That graphics card will consume around 75watts ... I roughly calculate your system would need around 350watts ... I'd run it, but I'd also be aware of the possible limitations.

You would need to replace, not add a second PSU, if you wished to provide a better overhead.

Thanks. Probably a good idea to upgrade to, say, a 500w psu. That should give me a bit of leeway.

 

[muckshifter]

Thanks. Probably a good idea to upgrade to, say, a 500w psu. That should give me a bit of leeway.

Good, you should have no problems with that. An easy fix.