Replacing CD-RW with DVD-RW

[scmudslinger]

Hi, this is my first post so bare with me.
I own an HP Pavilion XT978 (2.0 GHZ Pentium 4, 512 MB SDRAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, CD-RW, DVD reader drive). I want to install a DVD-RW in place of my CD-RW, which will give me two dvd drives. The computer came with a 200 watt power supply, and both drives were in the pc from the factory. I was wondering what the differences were in power consumption levels between cd-rw's and dvd-rw's. Can my 200 Watt power supply handle the replacement? Thanks.

P.S. The DVD-RW is about a year old, and is a TDK 440N (4X DVD-R, 2.4X DVD-RW).

 

[suprasteve]

There's no way to be sure without actually trying, but there shouldn't be hardly any change in power consumption. The newer drive may even be more efficient, but no promises on that. Regardless, I'm sure HP gave the computer more than enough power to run all the components that came with it, even though 200W is awfully puny, so you should be fine. Worst case scenario you could get a power supply that plugs directly into the wall and comes out as a molex, but I seriously doubt you will have any problems.

 

[tractorboy]

look at it this way, whether it is a cdrom, cd-rw or dvd, they use one motor
and they have different decoding circuitry that manipultes the R/W laser in different ways...so they are all going to be really close in power consumption. I just replaced a power supply at a Dentists on an HP pav that was 150 watts for a pent 4. We found a 300 watt replacement on the internet, was expensive...$120

I just bought a CDROM, CD R R/W , DVD ROM , DVD PLUS AND MINUS R RW , DVD DL plus minus R, COMBO
All a pc store would have to do is stock this one drive...it has everything.