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detecting power output

M

mikeczyz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 18, 2005
Messages
290
Hi guys,
My roommate has asked me for a video card recommendation. Before I can do this, I need to figure out what kind of power supply he's got in his current box.

Do I HAVE to open up his machine to look inside? He bought a dell, somewhat notorious for weak PSU, and I don't want to recommend him some power hungry vid card that he can't use.

Let me know if there's anything else you need that might help answer my query.
 
so it looks like there's a 305w power supply in there.

from what i've read, it needs an ATX power supply. however, i've also read some reports online that dell's have problems with new power supplies. is this just a vicious rumor?
 
it depends on how old the Dell is. A lot of older Dells (2000-2002ish I think) used a non-standard pinout for their motherboard connector, but they used the standard 20pin ATX connector. People who either bought a new motherboard or PSU ended up frying their systems. However, since then they have started using standards compliant PSUs.
 
What model Dell does he have?
PCP&C makes replacement PSUs for Dells.
 
is there any reason why the pc power and cooling stuff is so much more expensive than other brands?
 
mikeczyz said:
is there any reason why the pc power and cooling stuff is so much more expensive than other brands?
Click to expand...

because they're good. But alot of PSU's are in the same price range as PCP&C.

I would think (depending on the card you got) that the Dell PSU would be able to handle a GPU upgrade. What did you have in mind?
 
8800 gts.

nvidia recommends a 400w power supply.

i'm assuming with the rest of the stuff in the box, a 400w should be bare minimum.
 
mikeczyz said:
8800 gts.

nvidia recommends a 400w power supply.

i'm assuming with the rest of the stuff in the box, a 400w should be bare minimum.
Click to expand...

I believe the PSU you have now will be perfectly able to power an 8800GTS. According to this article a very high end system only drew 240w with the GTS and 301w with the GTX.
 
i think the link you posted was showing the power consumption for the cards, not the system as a whole.
 
mikeczyz said:
i think the link you posted was showing the power consumption for the cards, not the system as a whole.
Click to expand...

No, it's the whole system.

We tested power consumption for these parts in the same way we usually do, by measuring the total power draw of the system with each of the cards installed in two different states. The first state is with the system idle (no other programs running) and the second is while the GPU is under stress testing. We use a few of the benchmarks from 3DMark06 to stress the GPUs to find out their power consumption under load. Because we are measuring the wattage of the entire system and not simply the cards, we can only get a general idea of the type of power levels of these cards.
Click to expand...
 
"Most of these cards got results that remained around 180 Watts while the system was idle, and 280 Watts while the system was under load. "

From this snippet, it seems that the results are for the cards themselves. Maybe it's just a very poorly written article?
 
mikeczyz said:
"Most of these cards got results that remained around 180 Watts while the system was idle, and 280 Watts while the system was under load. "

From this snippet, it seems that the results are for the cards themselves. Maybe it's just a very poorly written article?
Click to expand...

Most the cards they tested were GTX's, only one was a GTS and it measured 244w from the wall during their loaded test Once you factor in a PSU's efficiency (we'll say 85% since that'll translate into more of the measured power actually being used by the system) you're looking at only 207watts of power actually being used. With a margin of +/-10% that a max of ~228w.
 
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