1.1 GHZ and above users, power supply question!

[Aman99]

Hi,
I own a 1 ghz t-bird that only goes to 1.1 ghz right now. Well I"m thinking about getting either a 1.1 ghz or 1.2 ghz thunderbird and doing a little overclocking. Right now I have an Antec 300 W power supply. Will that be enough to power those thunderbirds when they're overclocked? The other high powered things in my system are a GeForce 2 Ultra, and I dunno if cd-drives take much power, but i have 3 of them in the system.

If you think I will need more power, which supply would u recommend that costs less than $80? Let me know thanks!

Aaron

[Tachyon]

Your PSU should be sufficient. I haven't seen great results overclocking the 1.1GHz chips. You don''t say what board (chipset) you have but if you have a KT133A, you should get a chip that runs at 266.

[wild_andy_c]

Any "stable" 300W power supply should be more than sufficient

[DaveB]

Dunno exactly what's in your rig, but here's an analysis of your max power load guessing at some of the stuff you might have:

Motherboard 30W (+3.3V and +5V)
1.1 GHz T-Bird Overclocked 70W (+5V)
AGP card 20W (+3.3V)
Typical PCI card 5Wx2=10W (+5V)
Floppy drive 5W (+5V)
7200rpm IDE hard drive 10W (+5V and +12V)
CD-ROM 2x20W (+5V and +12V)
CD-R/RW 25W (+5V and +12V)
RAM 128MBx2 10W per or 20W (+3.3V)
Fans (3) 15W (+12V)
Total = 225W

Keep in mind that these are maximum, worst case, power loads. But you've got about 75W to spare before you hit the max on your supply. So, it should work. But if you start getting weird intermittent problems, go to a 400W supply. I just built a system for a guy with a 1.2 GHz T-Bird and got him a case with a 340W supply. It was only $9 more than the 300W, so I figured it was worth it being he's into SCSI stuff.

[Yomama]

DaveB (Apr 08, 2001 10:53 a.m.):
Dunno exactly what's in your rig, but here's an analysis of your max power load guessing at some of the stuff you might have:

Motherboard 30W (+3.3V and +5V)
1.1 GHz T-Bird Overclocked 70W (+5V)
AGP card 20W (+3.3V)
Typical PCI card 5Wx2=10W (+5V)
Floppy drive 5W (+5V)
7200rpm IDE hard drive 10W (+5V and +12V)
CD-ROM 2x20W (+5V and +12V)
CD-R/RW 25W (+5V and +12V)
RAM 128MBx2 10W per or 20W (+3.3V)
Fans (3) 15W (+12V)
Total = 225W

Keep in mind that these are maximum, worst case, power loads. But you've got about 75W to spare before you hit the max on your supply. So, it should work. But if you start getting weird intermittent problems, go to a 400W supply. I just built a system for a guy with a 1.2 GHz T-Bird and got him a case with a 340W supply. It was only $9 more than the 300W, so I figured it was worth it being he's into SCSI stuff.

DaveB,

Your itemization is a good start, but it is also important to look at the amperage of the 5V lead. The 70W CPU will draw 14A, and if he lucks out and gets it to 1.5GHs it will be 85W=17A. The PCI cards are 2A, HDD is 1A, Floppy, CDROM, CDRW and MoBo will be another 6A, though they do not all run at the same time. This comes out to 26A. Now many P/S provide only 28A or so on the 5V lead. This is probably still ok, but very much like in a house where you have the dishwasher, washing machine and toilte running at the same time, there is not much pressure left. I would try it out, but ultimately get a decent 400-450W P/S with 44A on the 5V lead.

Yo

[donnie]

I have a 1333/266 chip and am useing a 300 watt. I havn't had any problems.

[Hoot]

My own experience has been that up to 2.0 V on the core, a 300W will suffice. From 2.0 to 2.3, time for a 400W and above 2.3 time for a prayer. Actually time to consider dual 300s in parallel.

Hoot