Power Supply Question

[jjis]

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.

[rallynavvie]

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.

[jjis]

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

[fritzi93]

Do a search for "power supply calculator".

Or use this one:

http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html

Oftentimes, power supply calculators don't agree. Sometimes by a wide margin. The above calculator will give a recommendation on the high side.

Here's an uber-geeky calculator, which will likely give a lower result:

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

You'll need to know more specifics about your computer to use the latter one. Good luck.

[jjis]

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.

[Bjs]

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.

[redwudz]

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.

[jjis]

Is there any brand that's better? Seems all the brands at newegg has mixed reviews.

Searching around I found Ultra

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3276575&CatId=1078

[budz]

Get a Corsair 400 or 450 watt PS. I've done a few builds with those and they haven't failed yet.

Corsair 400 watt ps, $49.99 ($29.99 after MIR card)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139008

Corsair 450 watt ps, $64.99 ($44.99 after MIR card)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003

Just my 2 cents!!!!!

[rallynavvie]

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.

[jagabo]

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.