Power supply - how many watts?

[wackychimp1]

I'm trying to squeeze the following into a relatively small case:

Gigabyte GA-7VKMP
Athlon 2400XP
512 MB
200GB 7200RPM drive
WinTVPVR 250 card
S-Video out card

I need a pretty small (sized) power supply and have found one I think will work but it's only a 200 watt.

How can I know if that will be enough? Is there an easy way to know the consumption of those components listed?

In the past, I've never really worried about the PS because I usaully just throw in a huge one.

Thanks in advance,
Wackychimp



Last edited by wackychimp

[bradpvr]

A good page to get an estimate is:

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

You select the components you have and it'll tell you approx what your needs are.

By doing a quick test with your setup, it looks like you'd be using about 197 W, which is way too close to 200 W max of your PSU.

In my experience, I've found if you are near 20-30 W of the max of the PSU, you will run into stability issues.

Good luck!

[MonsterHTPC]

This depends greatly on the brand of the PSU as well. A 250 watt PSU can outperform a 400watt psu, depending on how well it is built. Best thing to do is: Do a search for the model PSU and read a few reviews and tests on it, see what others have thrown at it and how well it faired.

[ccarlin]

FYI: The PVR-250 uses around 13W max.

[fester]

http://www.axiontech.com/prdt.php?item=58858

this 270W SFX ps is what I bought to replace a 200watt supply struggling to keep 12V on a 2.4B system. It has very impressive 16A +12v rails which is almost as much +12V juice as my 350W antec tru power psu in another case. I dont think theres a more powerful SFX out there for 26 bucks. SFX only fits small mATX cases. I'm pretty sure it's an enermax OEM supply since it's almost exactly the same casing design as the other 200W enermax I have...