Video card with Antec BP430 PSU

toolcrib

New Member
About a month ago, my laptop quit on me so I quickly put tegether the computer in my signature. As a cost savings measure, I did not get a video card and have been using the integrated graphics. It worked out that there was a shell shocker deal for the Antec 300 with BP430 PSU, so I grabbed that as well.

At this time, I am looking at picking up a GTX460, but they recomend a 450W minimum power supply with a combined 12v power of 384W (32A). My processor has a TDP of 95W and the gtx 460 has a TDP of 160W, so from my calculations that would leave 180W (134 of 12V) to run the rest of the computer. I currently do not overclock, so I am not using any extra power there, and I would get a better PSU before overclocking anyway.

My actual question is whether I will be able to run a GTX460 GPU off of the Antec BP430, or should I get an HD5770 with a TDP of 108W. I would prefer the GTX460, but the added cost of a new PSU would make the upgrade more expensive than I want.

Thanks,
Andrew

P.S. Had I not read all of the enphasis on PSUs from this forum, I would not hesitate to run the GTX460 in my current build.
 
The 5770 system idle at 174w and 255w load. the gtx460(1gb verison) system idle at 178W and 307w load.
 
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The numbers you listed appear to be complete sytem loads, so with 307W full load system power that would be 72% of PSU max. I am comfortable with that, and will check some reviews of the GTX460 to see what they list as system power usage on their test systems.

Actually a quick search got me to the Guru3d review, and the 307W full GPU load is with an overclocked 140W TPD i7 965, so my full GPU load should be less than 307W leaving me ample overhead while running a GTX 460.

Thanks for your reply, as I had not thought of comparing full system power numbers from reviews.

Andrew
 
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