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new video card

N

Nye553

Gawd
Joined
Aug 28, 2004
Messages
874
When one gets a new video card and has a prebuilt computer like mine, how does one know if he or she needs a bigger power supply or more fans/that kind of sheet?
 
It's a given with a name brand pcs, besides "custom" rigs like alienware.
I believe they try to use the smallest possibe to save money.
 
His machines a Dell. So as a result his PSU is probably weak. Like a 250Watt to 300Watt I'd imagine.

There are two ways to find out. One is try Dell's website and look at the power ratings. Take them with a grain of salt, as max output wattage and what the 12v and 5v rail actually can putout are completely different subjects. As amperage on the rails is more important than output wattage. Tests were done years ago on this and it was discovered that the Antec 300Watt PSU at the time could actually power more devices than a 500Watt generic supply could. The Antec also had more stable voltages.

The second way is to crack open the sucker yourself and read that information on the PSU's label. If you don't understand the information, simply post the information here in as complete detail as you can.

What video card do you want to put in there? You sig says 6600GT. In which case you don't need much. It's power usage is pretty small. It doesn't need a molex connector for power. It gets all it's power from the PCI-Express x16 socket. Which according to Intel's specifications on the x16 socket, can provide up to 75watts. That's total peak wattage. The X800Pro's and 6800GT's pull slightly more than that under certain load conditions so they get extra power in the form of a molex connector.

Moloch said:
It's a given with a name brand pcs, besides "custom" rigs like alienware.
I believe they try to use the smallest possibe to save money.
Click to expand...

Yes they do. They like to give you a crappy PSU, crappy modem, crappy sound card and the cheapest hard drives possible. They also like to give you crap optical drives, although the larger OEM's usually don't do that. They got sick of warranty claims for it.
 
Dell gives decent PSUs. I had a 6800 running in an old Dell 8200 for a while and it was perfectly stable.
 
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