Upgrading, do I need a new power supply?

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tunaman

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I currently have an Antec 450w power supply that is powering up an old 939 dual core opteron system with 2 gigs of ram, 2 hard drives, and an 8800gtx. Now I am looking at upgrading and will probably go with a LGA775 dual core or if I can find a good deal on a combo a Phenom quad core. Will I need to upgrade the power supply to upgrade to the current generation of hardware?
 
Which Antec PSU specifically do you have? Please provide the full model name.
 
Well I am full of shit! Its actually a Thermaltake Pure Power 400w PSU. Which interestingly enough i cannot find seperately on their website but is listed under the specs for the Matrix case that I bought from them.
 
Alright, then you definitely need a new PSU. The Purepower line is generally crap, and since you've got one that's already several years old, you'd be best off with an upgrade to a more modern and more reliable unit.
 
You'll most definitely need a new power supply. 400w is barely enough to power what you have, let alone a newer more modern rig. Not to mention, a crappy power supply can hinder an overclock.

When looking for a new one brands like Corsair, Seasonic, PC Power & Cooling, Antec, Enermax are all good quality manufacturers. Depending on the video card you get will determine which power supply to buy. Don't get anything smaller than a 600w.
 
tunaman said:
\Will I need to upgrade the power supply to upgrade to the current generation of hardware?
Click to expand...

Yup. Now please tell us your max budget for a new PSU and whether or not you want modular cables and we can start helping you from there.
 
123Lanoix said:
get a corsair HX850 and not have to worry about anything
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Depends on his needs. An 850 is WAY overkill for most rigs out there. If he's not going to run dual GPU's, 4HDD's and a bunch of fans/cathodes, etc.. A 600w PSU (as long as its a quality one) should suffice.
 
As far as your proc is concerned, since you're looking at an upgrade, you could get the Athlon II X4 (Quad Core) which is a sub-$100 processor. You're better off with a 600 - 650 Watt PSU and channel the rest of the funds towards RAM and other stuff or just save it :)
 
Yeah, currently I am running an 8800GTS and am going to stick with that. I dont do a lot of gaming, but some. What I mainly want to be able to do is to watch blu-ray movies on my computer. So I am looking at a quad core system. I was looking at a Core2Quad but it seems that those are just as much out of my price range as an i5 or i7. So I started looking at the Phenoms and Athlon 2s and found that those fit inside my price range which is about $275 max for cpu, mobo, and memory and since it looks like I also have to buy a PSU I may be able to go a bit more as it looks like I am going to have to split buying stuff, some this paycheck and some next paycheck.

So here is what I am going to be putting in:

8800GTS vid card
4 gigs of ram
1 36gig Raptor HD
1 750 gig HD
1 500 gig HD
1 200 gig HD

and that is pretty much it. If I can find an SLI board I may just get one and later on add another 8800GTS. I am also planning on just using on-board sound as that is usually more then enough for me.

What do you guys think? I am thinking I may just buy my PSU and RAM this week and then wait until after the 5th to buy the CPU and Mobo but I am thinking that there might be some killer package deals with Windows 7 coming out this week. But if you guys think that there may be something I can get away with for under $300 total, I would definitely be interested. Thanks for the help!
 
I will suggest a Silverstone Strider. A 500w should be more than enough, while the 600w will offer greater expandability. It's has 80%+ efficiency and modular cabling. I've been using the 750w for about a year and a half now with no problems what so ever. With the rig in my sig, it's able to keep all 3 major rails stable and without any major deviation.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817163112 ->560w
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817163109 ->600w
 
tunaman said:
Yeah, currently I am running an 8800GTS and am going to stick with that. I dont do a lot of gaming, but some. What I mainly want to be able to do is to watch blu-ray movies on my computer.
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That's it? What CPU, mobo, and RAM do you have now? Which 8800GTS? the 320MB, 640MB, 512MB?

If blu-ray movie is all that you're planning to do with your PC (web browsing, file downloading, music really don't need much) and assuming that you have a decent enough CPU now, then all you need to do is upgrade the video card to the HD4670 or HD4850 or HD5750. At that point, all you need is this PSU:
$70 - Seasonic SS-500ET 500W PSU

The three video cards I mentioned supports the offloading of the decoding of HD content. Meaning that the GPU does most, if not all, of the work playing back HD content like blu-ray. So even if your PC has a low-end Celeron, it would still playback HD content with any of the above cards just as well, if not better, than a Core i7 setup.
 
Second what Danny said. The 8800GTS 320/640 can not do HD playback. Pairing them in SLI would not be cost effective relative to performance. You'd be better off picking up a PSU, and a decent GPU if you want to go with your stated budget. With light gaming I don't see the Opteron being much a bottle neck, and has plenty of horsepower for entertainment needs. Then again if you feel the need or just want to do a upgrade, by all means proceed. ;) The PSU Danny linked and a HD 5750 would be a great upgrade, and allow you the latest HDMI audio features, off loaded HD video and meet your gaming needs, all while using less power than your 8800gts.
 
For the setup you mentioned, the BFG LS-550W is a good choice as well.
 
Get a 5750 and you likely won't even need to upgrade your PSU or CPU. The 5750 does HD streaming, so it will do all the work for your bluray movies etc. You can get the 5750 for $129 for the 1GB version or $109 for the 512mb version. Throw in some bing cashback/mir action and you might be able to get it for around 100 bucks shipped.

Review here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/10/12/amd_ati_radeon_hd_5770_5750_review/

Power consumption here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/10/12/amd_ati_radeon_hd_5770_5750_review/7

5750 power consumption at idle draws around 20W and at load draws about 105W.

The total tested configuration total drew under 270W with the 5750 at stock speeds and under 290W with the 5750 overclocked.
 
vjcsmoke said:
Get a 5750 and you likely won't even need to upgrade your PSU or CPU. The 5750 does HD streaming, so it will do all the work for your bluray movies etc. You can get the 5750 for $129 for the 1GB version or $109 for the 512mb version. Throw in some bing cashback/mir action and you might be able to get it for around 100 bucks shipped.

Review here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/10/12/amd_ati_radeon_hd_5770_5750_review/

Power consumption here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/10/12/amd_ati_radeon_hd_5770_5750_review/7

5750 power consumption at idle draws around 20W and at load draws about 105W.

The total tested configuration total drew under 270W with the 5750 at stock speeds and under 290W with the 5750 overclocked.
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I agree, this is probably you're best option. You could, however, invest $60 or so for a decent 650 watt or so PSU. But I don't like to spend a lot of money, so if it were me, I'd just get a 5750.
 
Ok. So you guys convinced me. I am going to go the vidcard and PSU route and see how that works out. I upgraded to the 8800gts thinking that would get me better video playback and it did but I could tell that the system was topping out. After getting the new vid card I thought that the CPU just wasnt fast enough especially since it still uses old DDR ram. But alas that appears not to be the case. I started reading reviews and one thing I noticed is that the HD 4870 offers a lot better performance and yet is still available around the same price. Does the 4870 still have the same hd video playback capabilities of the new 57xx series?

Another question I have is if I buy a PSU that says its "i7 ready" will that still be compatible with my old 939 mobo?
 
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tunaman said:
Does the 4870 still have the same hd video playback capabilities of the new 57xx series?
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Yes. I don't think that HD playback was changed with the 5000 series, but even if it was, the 4870 still has support for hardware HD playback and should be good enough for anything you need.
tunaman said:
Another question I have is if I buy a PSU that says its "i7 ready" will that still be compatible with my old 939 mobo?
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Yes, but please post which PSU you are looking at. There are many low-quality PSUs that are deceptively marketed as high-end units, so make sure beforehand that you're actually getting something good before you pull the trigger.
 
I was looking at an OCZ modular power supply. I found the GameXStream or also the Modxstream series for around $70-80 for a 700w PSU. At this time I would rather go modular then have a huge mess of extra cables to manage in there. Are those good power supplies?
 
I guess I can go without modular if they are more expensive. Are ANY of these "80 PLUS" certified PSUs good? Any for under $80 that are not jet engines?
 
tunaman said:
I guess I can go without modular if they are more expensive. Are ANY of these "80 PLUS" certified PSUs good? Any for under $80 that are not jet engines?
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The 80Plus certification relates only to efficiency. Most good PSUs nowadays are 80Plus certified, but just because a unit is certified doesn't mean that it's necessarily good, and there are many with the certification that are not.
 
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