I have a 40Gb and a 80 GB ATA hd, I want to discard the 40 Gb and attach a 250 Gb sata hd. (I have 450 watt PSU - iBall), i have an Asus dvd-ram (sata) plus all my other hardware spec specified in "my system spec." , will this PSU be enough to run all this?
Last edited by dorian hawkmoon; 20 Jan 2010 at 12:39. Reason: added info
can you post a model number from that PSU
never heard of that brand before this will probably work but I would replace it with a better unit never skimp on a power supply get a good one by a good maker like Corsair, PC power and Cooling, Seasonic something like that if you get a good stable PSU made by a good maker with PFC the wattage becomes a little less important because it's more efficient and wastes less power if you get a crappy PSU with no PFC and it's rated at 1000 watts but wastes 50% of that now you only have a 500 watt PSU.
Also look for one that has ample amperage on the +12 volt rail a single rail would be better than multiples get one that's rated at the very least 20 amps the more the better if your going to use a large video card and a quad CPU with 4+ gigs of ram you better have 40 amps
Based on your computer specs, a 450 is mostly likely going to be just fine and dandy. Although I do agree that cheap power supplies are usually not the best by any means.
I run quite a number of lab computers at work with Antec cases and 430 Watt Antec Basiq PSU's and they are fine. Most are dual and quad core boxes, with 4-8GB of RAM, 8600GT video cards, multiple NIC's, a DVD burner and a couple of hard drives.
With the question being can you take out a 40gig hd and replace it with a 250 gig sata the answer is yes, your comp will handle it just fine.
Smitty
Thanks folks, I was just a little bit worried that 450 W (17 amp 12 volt rail I think) PSU won't be able to handle the 250 Gb + 80 Gb HDD plus the gpu and whatnot, and some of the important parts may get fried!
the larger hard drive isn't going to draw more power than the smaller hard drive actually the newer SATA drives as apposed to older IDE drives should be more power efficient but like I said earlier i would still shop around for a better power supply 17 amps isn't much
Drives only use maybe 10 watts, so they are very unlikely to be a deal-breaker for any particular power supply.
for the average system a high wattage power supply is not really needed but a stable power supply with active PFC and some decent amperage is about all you need
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