Power supply

[rateofdecay]

I am currently running on a 300W power supply which is what my video card recommends, but I also have a number of card readers, 6 USB ports, a firewire connection a dvd burner and dvd rom drive, a gig of ram (and so on) and have calculated my theoretical power needs to be somewhere around 315W. I have not seen any ill-effects but feel as though many of my computer's components are not getting the power necessary to run at peak efficiency and have noticed my video card running rather hot at times. I know a bigger power supply would be prudent but could I also expect to see a boost in my performance if I upgrade to say 400W?

 

[Kage]

I wouldn't expect you to see a performance boost, but what I do expect is that your PC won't be choking, so I don't know.

I'd update to at least a 400-450 watts, yeah.

The power supply would not be causing your graphics card to work any harder, so won't be causing the heat problems. Anyway, graphics cards are meant to run hot.

Hope this helps

 

[Dishdog]

You have to remember that everything isn't running all at once so the 300 watt would be enough,but i would still get a higher watt PSU.

 

[setishock]

Plan ahead...

When buying a prebuilt or building your own it doesn't matter if not all devices will be "on" at once or not. Plan as if you have all of your devices running full demand at once. They may appear as if not doing anything but they are drawing power. I have a Allied 400watt psu and although the worse case senerieo is well under what it can do I would like to have more. So the double wide project has budgeted in a 500watt Allied. Actually I plan on building a psu designed by me for my power demands. Something along the lines of balanced power from all outputs.