Minimum PSU specs

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PcGk

New Member
I have a few ~500W PSU's lying around. I am in the process of upgrading to either a Pentium or Athlon Dual-Core (mid-level at best). I will be running 2 HDD's, 2 optical drives, mid-level graphics card or onboard video, TV tuner, SB Live!. What is the minimum PSU specs I should be looking at (i.e- how many amps on each rail)?
 
It depands on the makes and model supplies you have there. Here I run two 250gb WD ide drives, 2gb of DDR400 memory, AMD64 3500+ Socket 939 model cpu, an MSI Radeon X1300 Pro PCI-E video card, one pci video capture card, anoner pci type tv tuner card that also can be used for video capture/edit, an Audigy 4 Pro model Sound Blaster all with an Antec TP II 480w model supply. Plus I will adding one or two WD 500gb sata drives wery soon. If those are made by a brand listed in the "good" list below you should be all set. Note that makes and models subject to revision.

Good:
Akasa PaxPower - Antec(except Smart Power models) - Astec - AOpen - Channel Well - Coolermaster - Enermax
- Enlight - Fortron Source (Sparkle) - HEC - Hi-Power - Jeantech - NSpire - OCZ Technology - PC Power & Cooling - PowerMan
- Seasonic - SilenX - SilverStone - Tagan - TTGI/SuperFlower - Vantec - Zippy / Emacs - Verax - Zalman
- Corsair

Bad:
Allied - Antec Smart Power models seem to lack(recommend True Power or NeoHE) - Aspire - CoolMax - DEER - EYE-T
- KingStar - L&C - Linkworld - Logisys - PowerMagic - PowerUp - Powmax - Q-Tec - Raidmax - Skyhawk - Star
- Turbolink - Ultra - ThermalTake - Rosewill
 
PcGk said:
I have a few ~500W PSU's lying around. I am in the process of upgrading to either a Pentium or Athlon Dual-Core (mid-level at best). I will be running 2 HDD's, 2 optical drives, mid-level graphics card or onboard video, TV tuner, SB Live!. What is the minimum PSU specs I should be looking at (i.e- how many amps on each rail)?
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They might be but it depends on how good they are, theres cheap 500Watt ones too. How much do they have on the +12V rail
 
True. I'd look for at least +12V@18A with basic integrated video, or +12V@22A for a typical low end-midrange video card. The amperage on the other rails is not a significant concern.

As always, a decent brand is important, and make sure it has all the required connectors, particularly a 24pin ATX main and, of course, the 4-pin ATX12V.
 
A good stable supply with the 20+4pin main power connector and four wire 12v molex plug for the cpu feed there is required on just about every new board out. Speaking of revisions on the "good", the ""bad", and the... what? "ugly" list? where did that come from? please a change below.


Good:
Akasa PaxPower - Antec(except Smart Power models) - Astec - AOpen - Channel Well - Coolermaster - Enermax(except Liberty models)
- Enlight - Fortron Source (Sparkle) - HEC - Hi-Power - Jeantech - NSpire - OCZ Technology - PC Power & Cooling - PowerMan
- Seasonic - SilenX - SilverStone - Tagan - TTGI/SuperFlower - Vantec - Zippy / Emacs - Verax - Zalman
- Corsair

Bad:
Allied - Antec Smart Power models seem to lack(recommend True Power or NeoHE) - Aspire - CoolMax - DEER - EYE-T
- Enermax Liberty models seeing problems - KingStar - L&C - Linkworld - Logisys - PowerMagic - PowerUp - Powmax - Q-Tec - Raidmax - Skyhawk - Star
- Turbolink - Ultra - ThermalTake - Rosewill
 
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