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jjis
Member
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Location: United States
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I have an Emachines T5234 with a 300w PSU. In the pc now are 2 Hard Drives, 1 dvd burner, a firewire card and Hauppauge 1600 Tuner card. It's XP SP3, 2gb ram.
I'm not that pc savy, is that too much for the power supply? I'm not a big gamer, basically Mame emulator for the kids and Madden '08 are all the games that are played on the pc. I do edit the HD videos I have from the firewire and tuner cards, but just basic stuff, basic image editing too.
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rallynavvie
OS agnostic
Joined: 10 Sep 2002
Location: Minnesotan in Texas
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What did you add to the box after you purchased it and how long have you owned it? You might be OK with a 300W as long as your video card isn't drawing much power. But if it's getting up on 4-5 years old you might want to replace it just to be safe.
_________________
FB-DIMM are the real cause of global warming
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jjis
Member
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Location: United States
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Had it two years. Added a 2nd HD, firewire card and the tuner card.
I'm using the onboard video, but want to upgrade, But not sure if the PSU could take it. Newegg and other stores have older cards with minimum 250 or 300w. For what I use the pc for, I don't need the latest and greatest video card anyway
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fritzi93
Member
Joined: 01 Nov 2003
Location: U.S.
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jjis
Member
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Location: United States
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The first one gave me 396 with the 2 hard drives, then 357 with one. Could this one be a bit high, just so Newegg can push their PSU's?
The 2nd gave me 287. Not sure about the network and sound settings. I have an integrated card, so I chose PCI NIC, there's no sound card other than what came with the pc.
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Bjs
RoadKill
Joined: 09 Feb 2004
Location: Australia
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450 watts is considered fine on the lower side for modern systems
500 watt units can be found everywhere ... and don't get stuck on "brand" names ... some have inferior ratings reported.
some of those calculators are way off ... 321 watts required ... nope, its 129 watts short .. this system will not start with anything rated less than 450 watts.
Second calculator link ... confusing ... but pretty well bang dead on ... 550 watts.
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redwudz
Mod Neophyte
Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Location: AZ, USA
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Another consideration is that E-Machines have a history of poor power supplies, though yours may not be one of the problematic ones. But I would probably still consider replacing it with a name brand PS. If a PS fails, it can do a lot of damage to the PC.
For your setup, it's likely a 400W would be plenty big enough. If you check once in a while at NewEgg or other retailers, you will probably find a suitable PS on sale for a reasonable price. They are easy enough to change out as all the connectors are coded. Just keep track of where the old ones went.
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jjis
Member
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Location: United States
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budz
IGA Ninja
Joined: 11 Jan 2003
Location: In the shadows.....
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rallynavvie
OS agnostic
Joined: 10 Sep 2002
Location: Minnesotan in Texas
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I'm always going to push PC Power & Cooling power supplies. I've yet to see one of those fail on any of the builds I've done for friends/family/coworkers. And of course my own silly machines.
_________________
FB-DIMM are the real cause of global warming
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jagabo
Member
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: none
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| rallynavvie wrote: |
| I'm always going to push PC Power & Cooling power supplies. I've yet to see one of those fail |
I had one fail. It was many years ago though.
Something to consider: a stressed power supply is more likely to die. And when a PSU dies it could take a lot of other components with it. I once had a PSU failure fry the motherboard, CPU, and hard drive.
You might also want to consider noise. Some are louder than others. I got a 500 watt Antec Basiq for something like US$15 a few years ago. Its fan is very loud. I keep it as an emergency backup and test bench PSU.
TomsHardware and AnandTech review power supplies quite regularly.
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