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XPS 420 375 PSU? Upgrading?

B

BaoTung

Gawd
Joined
Dec 25, 2009
Messages
983
I recently bought a XPS 420 system. Q6600 3.0ghz, nVidia 9800GT, 600gb 7200rpm drive, and 4G DDR2 ram, 22" 1900x1080 LCD for 150$(I KNOW WHAT A GREAT DEAL RIGHT?!).

I want to upgrade the gfx card to roughly something like the 5850 but it my power supply is at 375W, but I hear that dell PSUs are underrated, so Im not sure what to do. I keep hearing about the 5770, but I kind of want a little more power. So what do you guys think? Can I run the 5850 with my current psu?
 
Hard to say, not a lot of clear cut reviews of the Dell power supplies.

An AMD 5850 in an overclocked Core i7 920 system draws 357W AC from the wall according to Hard
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/30/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5850_video_card_review/7
Assuming that PCPC power supply has decent efficiency at 80%, then the DC side of that system is only pulling 285W. Room to spare right? Maybe. There are other considerations such as current available on 12V rails, etc.

If it was me, I'd try it. You shouldn't hurt any of your electronics. The signs of an overloaded power supply are the inability to boot, and/or random blue screens. When a rail maxes out and the load is needing to draw more, voltage drops, and when the voltage drops below spec it causes instability in the IC's/memory.

I'd buy into 5850 if that's what you want, but make sure you also have budgeted for a new power supply if needed.
 
I'd say cutting it just a tad close:
The HD 5850 uses about 166W of power at full load. The Q6600 uses about 95W at fully load. That's roughly 256W of power at full load for just the CPU and GPU. Most of those Dell 375W PSUs tend to have 30A on the +12V rail (Please confirm this figure for us OP) so that's roughly 360W on the +12V rail alone. That would leave about 104W for the mobo, HDD, DVD drive, etc.

Really cutting it close. I personally wouldn't do it. I've seen some PSUs that have been overloaded than necessary take out some parts of a PC or kill the PC completely.
 
Hmmm....I wonder what kind of psu fits into the 420. Time to research I guess.
 
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