How Much Power Do I Need? Calculators are Worthless...

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Zefram0911

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 19, 2002
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I'm building an HTPC. How big of a power supply do I need?

it's a micro ATX board with a Q6600 (OC'ed to 3.6Ghz), 4GB RAm, five 1 TB Raid 5, areca raid controller, bluray/hddvd player.

I was thinking a Seasonic 500, 600, or 700W, but that might be too small? I'm not really sure how much power things draw.

Ideas? TIA
 
I was thinking the same thing. A Quad-Core CPU (OCed or not) and RAID seems like overkill for a HTPC.
 
I have a spare Q6600 laying around so I wanted to use it for some folding and the RAID is for file serving. I want to do a double duty HTPC File Server.
 
500watt Seasonic would be just fine. I ran the system in my sig on an Antec 500watt for awhile during the build and burn in process. I was running @3.6 during that time as well, I just decided the power draw/heat for an extra 200MHz wasn't worth it on my chip.
 
I got a 365W estimate using a PSU calculator for your configuration. :p
 
Using onboard video I'd recommend a Corsair 450HX.

I put a rig together using almost the same deal except not as many harddrives and a new 8800 GTS using a 520HX.
 
Antec Earthwatts 380w IMHO. That system probably barely tops 150w at load, if that. The Q6600 is the only thing eating any power. If you want plenty of room to expand a 450w Corsair would be nice, too. But the Earthwatts is going to save you quite a bit of dough.
 
That calculator does seem to suck a little less than others. Its recommendations are less bloated.
 
Any name brand PSU over 400w will easily power your system, allowing for the surge of 5 drives spinning up at the same time, and possibly even an 8600GTS to help offload video display.
 
seems like a 500W PSU might be the sweet spot for me... considering minor upgrades in the future.
 
Not all power supply calculators are worthless according to a thread at Silent PC Review. Folks at SPCR have been testing calculations provided by the Extreme Power Supply Calculator site against Seasonic Power Angel and Kill-A-Watt meter readings of their systems. It seems that Extreme Power Supply Calculator is very accurate.
 
says, I need a little under 400W and that's spec'ed out with a pretty high end Ati video card.... I think I'll get the 525W version, just in case I want to upgrade later and add more hdds.
 
Well, think I have just found my system instability.

After using that nice link to a PSU calculator it comes out as needing over 36A (19A of that was just for the CPU, I have a silly overclock) from my 12v rail. My current 600W PSU has 3 rails and poorly spec'd at 18, 12 and 8 A max each (peak of 19, 19, 8) with the CPU is fed from the 12A rail.

Shame, it was a nice PSU for my old setup, new Corsair 750W one on its way with a single 12v line to make life easy and treated myself to 4GB more ram.
 
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