420w psu query

Hi,

You need to factor in the wattage all your components are drawing.

P4/Athlon XP/A64 - 60-90 watts

Motherboard - 20-30 watts

RAM 20 watts per 256MB

PCI card - 5-10 watts

AGP video card - 20 - 50 watts

Hard drive - 5-20 watts

Optical drive - 10 -20 watts

Case fan - 1 5 watts


Tally up what you have running and be sure to leave yourself a generous headroom such as 30% or so for the large power spike when you first power up your PC and everything starts up at once :)


The quality of the PSU should be taken into account as well. Cheap low quality PSU's won't put out near the power they're rated for when they reach normal operating temperature. Good PSU's are made by the likes of Antec, Enermax, Fortron and PC Power & Cooling.
 
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1. What type of fans? (make, model or are they stock)

2. What video card?

3. How many drives are you running?
 
Praetor said:
1. What type of fans? (make, model or are they stock)

2. What video card?

3. How many drives are you running?
Click to expand...
2 coolermaster fans 3 stock fans, 256 6800 gt one hd one dvd drive
 
You should be fine with a 420W PSU just remember not to connect the GT to the same rail as say a HDD :)
 
Praetor said:
You should be fine with a 420W PSU just remember not to connect the GT to the same rail as say a HDD :)
Click to expand...
thats good news then, was on a tight budget with the case/psu cos the systems prretty heavy. so i got 6 molex connectors and 2 fdd connectors and i gotta connect the mobo,dvd rom, one hardrive, and 5 fans to it, thatll be ok then?
 
thats good news then, was on a tight budget with the case/psu cos the systems prretty heavy. so I got 6 molex connectors and 2 fdd connectors and I gotta connect the mobo,dvd rom, one hardrive, and 5 fans to it, thatll be ok then?
Click to expand...
You should be fine... have the GF, HDD and Optical on one rail and spread the fans on the rest :)
 
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