350 watt PSu - how many devices?

E

Emu

Geek Trainee
Sorry for all the threads lately...

I have an antec 350 watt power supply and i'm wondering how many devices it can support..

its powering
-an NF7 mobo
-2500+ AMD (which i heard use a lot of power)..
-2 hard drives
-1 CD burner

If i add a second optical drive (DVD), would that be pushing it?
 
Off a 350W Sparkle PSU, which are on par with Antec---but less flashy, I run the following:

Athlon XP 2400+
Radeon 9600XT
3 IDE hard drives
1 SCSI hard drive
2 optical drives
5 80mm fans
2 PCI cards
cold cathode

Personally, I'd say you're fine. If you were asking about a GeForce 6800, I'd say to look at something beefier, but not for an optical or hard drive. They use some power, but it's not major and you've got a good PSU.
 
I had an antec 350W before and the only thing that made me buy a new one is my 9800 Pro.

I also have 5 extra fans.

You should be fine.
 
Ok, thanks for the help... i have that same vid card and was wondering that it might take a lot of power.. but i guess not...

Thanks guys.

Big B said:
Off a 350W Sparkle PSU, which are on par with Antec---but less flashy, I run the following:

Athlon XP 2400+
Radeon 9600XT
3 IDE hard drives
1 SCSI hard drive
2 optical drives
5 80mm fans
2 PCI cards
cold cathode

Personally, I'd say you're fine. If you were asking about a GeForce 6800, I'd say to look at something beefier, but not for an optical or hard drive. They use some power, but it's not major and you've got a good PSU.
Click to expand...
 
Hi there,

I would say you should be fine on a 350W PSU, but to be honest, it all depends on the quality of the PSU as much as the claimed Wattage. I have a 650Watt PSU and it gives lots of problems (Bluescreens when I insert ANYTHING PnP).

From my experince, I have had lots of problems which were down to a low wattage, or poor quality PSU. Main ones being a reluctancy to power on after a reboot (this is because it 'trips' the PSU out if you are near the power limit- it will come back to life after ten minutes). Also a lot of hard drive problems, mainly "delayed Write Failed" which is a bad sign!

If you are really bothered then if you search google, there are lots of websites which you can use to calculate it. I think some of the PSU manufacturers have some, but cant remember which.

Like I said though, the quality of the output is as important as the output rating in terms of system stability.
 
Excellent point. Yes, a quality PSU is much better than a generic one. A PSU should be reasonably heavy. Some cheapo PSU's are very light, and that's bad because there are less components inside to provide a steady stream of clean power to the devices.
 
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