Building a random computer out of extra parts

I have a motherboard, Core 2 Duo E7500, 200gb IDE hard drive, 2 sticks of ram, and 3 fans. I have a random 250 watt power supply sitting around. Do you think that would be enough?

Solarstarshines said:

should be if your not running anything but that and no overclocking

Of course not. Just for maybe Skype, web browsing, and chatting, listening to music, and maybe movies.

UnknownReverent said:

Just for maybe Skype, web browsing, and chatting, listening to music, and maybe movies.

Depends on your video card needs, whether or not a 250W power supply will be adequate. Is this a "modern" motherboard providing PCIe slots?

For onboard graphics chip and your limited usage as described, should be ok. But for any high-end video card I doubt this power supply will be adequate. Typically 400W minimum I believe.

If you're receptive to a terrific inexpensive upgrade to a perfectly adequate and very capable card that's extremely low power usage and will give you terrific performance, pick up a FANLESS ATI HD5450 1GB (100% silent) for about $40. It's got a 1/2-size format and comes with an additional "small profile" backplane you can use, so it fits perfectly if your case and motherboard is "small profile". It's also part of the family of video cards (HD5xxx and higher) that ATI is continuing to support with their current Catalyst drivers.

Also, if it's going to be Win7 that you install I'd recommend spending a few dollars on a matched pair of memory cards to provide at least 4GB total for good performance, if your existing memory doesn't provide 4GB.

dsperber said:

UnknownReverent said:

Just for maybe Skype, web browsing, and chatting, listening to music, and maybe movies.

Depends on your video card needs, whether or not a 250W power supply will be adequate. Is this a "modern" motherboard providing PCIe slots?

For onboard graphics chip and your limited usage as described, should be ok. But for any high-end video card I doubt this power supply will be adequate. Typically 400W minimum I believe.

If you're receptive to a terrific inexpensive upgrade to a perfectly adequate and very capable card that's extremely low power usage and will give you terrific performance, pick up a FANLESS ATI HD5450 1GB (100% silent) for about $40. It's got a 1/2-size format and comes with an additional "small profile" backplane you can use, so it fits perfectly if your case and motherboard is "small profile".

Also, if it's going to be Win7 that you install I'd recommend spending a few dollars on a matched pair of memory cards to provide at least 4GB total for good performance, if your existing memory doesn't provide 4GB.

I have 4gb of ram, and would adding a cd rom matter? I'm just using the integrated video.

UnknownReverent said:

I have 4gb of ram, and would adding a cd rom matter? I'm just using the integrated video.

So your memory is fine. Adding a CD/DVD drive is not an issue (as far as power consumption). And if you're going to stay with integrated video then that, too, suggests your 250W PSU will be fine.

Guess it doesn't matter too much anymore. No operating system will install for some reason.

What's the issue you are having?

DeaconFrost said:

What's the issue you are having?

With Xp I've gotten a BSOD while it hit "Finishing install", try again and I get that it can't partition, try 7 and I get an error while expanding, try 7 again and I get that it doesn't have drivers or something. These have all happened multiple times.

I should probably mention that the 200gb IDE hdd was bad. I booted it up before even trying to install anything and it said Smart Check: Bad. So I proceeded to put in a SATA hdd. This has all happened on that. Keep in mind that I've tried installing with usb, and 2 different cd drives.

It seems I've finally gotten it installed. I used a different program to create a bootable usb install. I guess the cd drives are both bad. Ironic.