Power Supply Unit for Multimedia PC

I recommend 450W at @ 80% minimum

The processor alone is going to eat up 65W (if it's a 9100/9350), 95W if it's not. With everything else going, even if it does work,the PSU is going to be hot and unreliable.

Get a good 500W supply and it'll run cool, quiet and for a long time.

wow...160 WATTS??? Antique PSU's use that kinda power.

...your running a multimedia PC successfully on 160w is extremely doubtful.

400 watts and more is ideal to run PSU and peripherals on modern mobo's.

After a house fire the insurance company replaced the computers. They skimped on the power supplies and we had mother board failures, disk drive failures, etc which we figure were caused by power starvation. In our family we always get a big power supply, and then make sure that it is more than could possible need.

Add it to the list, you can never be too skinny, too rich, have too fast a CPU, too much memory, to big a disk drive, too fancy a monitor, etc

Surprisingly, it's not that old. I also have a 110w psu which is ancient. The 160 was running a 2GHz celeron before, with a CD, floppy drive and graphics card. Now I am trying to run with a 2GHz x4 Phenom with no PCI cards, no g card, no drives and the same hard drive as before.

Do your Motherboard accepts [compliance problem]? P4 MBs need 20/24 pin PSU and new ones are more than 350W.

well bugger me, that's not bad. If peripheral count is low...go for it.

That power supply of low wattage (new one you have) must be propriety for some desktop computer, such as a Compaq and the like.

The power supply came with an RM, which is fundamentally a computer used in schools because it is cheap.

What you need is a power supply calculator. Here's two free ones.

http://web.aanet.com.au/SnooP/psucalc.php

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

Thanks. I did the eXtreme Power Supply PSU calculator, and it came up with needing a 38w PSU.

A 450W Rated PSU with 80% efficiency = 360W actual

I checked my own system with an Athlon 64X2 5400 and they came up with 175 watts needed. (I'm actually running a 450)

I've been retired from the computer business for several years now and the world of computers has changed greatly. But, I do see a lot of these little name branded machines running 200 watt supplies.

I just ran calculations for a Phenom IIX4, 2 sticks DDR2, DVD-RW, 120 fan, SATA HDD, front side USB and a couple of lights and came up with 180 watts. I did notice the 38 watts you refered too. You need to push the calculate button to get the correct wattage.

Oh yeah

After pressing the calculate button, it says 108w

Mine is Phenom 1x4, 1 stick DDR2, IDE hdd and a USB.

I'm not sure if it takes into consideration the built-in video card, some of the calculators do. I've read that an ATI 3200HD on-board video card takes about 20 watts.

Which would only take me up to 128w.

If you try to squeak by with a low rated PSU you maybe shooting yourself in the foot. The calculation needs take account of all devices including fans, CPU + fans, case fans, HDD, Optical devices, graphics card, etc..

A PSU that is not suitable for a specific computer does have the capability to bring a system crashing to its knees. An underpowered PSU may cause heat buildup, automatic shutdowns, freezing, BSOD's, video distortion, system overheating, and a lack of power that may cause expensive top shelf Cpu's, motherboards, hard drives and ram to burn up. You can lose not only expensive components, but related time loss in a work environment may cost you hundreds of dollars in lost time. Therefore, make sure you have an adequate PSU to power your unit.

If you want to be able to use that nice processor and take full advantage of it's capabilities while your conserve power also. Checkout this comprehesive power supply information and selection guide

On an older power supply you might not have the right number of pins connecting to the mother board. The old ones used a 20 pin connector while the new ones use a 24 pin connector plus a 4 pin connector.

I just looked at the clock. It's 12:25am here so you must be about 7:25am.

Just ignore the last about the pins. That chip is new enough that it should be using the 24/4 on the motherboard. With that I'm off to bed; my brain quits functioning when the sun goes down and that was a long time ago.

Randy