psu and video card?

Hi. I have the p2 x4 955be, msi 770-c45, 2x2gb ocz3p1333lvam4gk, with a seagate 7200.10 320gb Sata HD, a dvr-111dbk in an antec slk3700amb case. My problem is I need a pci-e video card as I tested the system with an old pci voodoo card I had. Also my psu is a fsp group ax400-pn. I don't play games and I run linux. So, would I be better off to keep this power supply and get the best video card I can get or upgrade the psu and get a better video card. The psu has about 2 years of light use. Please advise so I can order the parts and hopefully get them by the end of the week. If it matters I have a 19 inch monitor and I am getting a 22 inch soon. Thanks for your help!

From what I found that PSU is divided between a 10A and a 13A @ 12VDC rail. I'm not really sure 156W (13A) is enough to run the 125W 955BE CPU plus the chipset plus whatever power PCIe will pull off the board. Seems like you'd really be pushing your luck. If it were a 22-23A single rail you might get by with it but with low-rated dual rails you're just asking for trouble.


Best bet is to replace the PSU with a minimum 18A for the motherboard rail if you get a low-powered video card and no OC. If you plan to OC then you'll need a minimum 20A or so for the board alone. My OC'ed 940BE (also 125W) cruncher with it's 7400LE video card sucks down about 220W and I'm only running two fans since it's caseless (I'm using both fans for CPU cooling, which stirs enough air for chipset and RAM cooling as well). Add in the standard +10% margin and you're looking right at 20A (240W) on one rail for my crunching rig with an old, low-end video card ...

Look at the Corsair HX620 IMO. Plenty of juice, reliable, modular cables, etc.

And if you don't play games much look at a low to mid-end card. Nothing higher than a HD4850 or 250GTX. Both can be found fairly 'cheaply'. Depending on your version of cheap.

So i'd go by your latter choice; PSU + card.

Cheap for a non-gamer is a $30 8400GS. It's all you'll ever need for everyday use if you don't game ...

Low end cards these days are super. 30-50 dollar range for a video card is suffice for a non gamer.

Hell a 4350 will run many games decently and it's only 20-30 bucks. Low res and low detail, but you can at least play 'em.

I suspect that those of us who grew up on NES/SNES and ancient apple II/dos games don't mind low res/detail as much as younger folks seem to.

Bobnova said:

Hell a 4350 will run many games decently and it's only 20-30 bucks. Low res and low detail, but you can at least play 'em.

I suspect that those of us who grew up on NES/SNES and ancient apple II/dos games don't mind low res/detail as much as younger folks seem to.

Click to expand...

Lol amen.. I'm young, (20), but I still love the older games . Sonic, old ff's, etc etc.

Thank you all for taking the time to answer me and for your help. After reading Quietice's and Mjolnir's reply to upgrade my psu and then reading in the psu section, I was thinking of going with the Corsair-650TX. What do you think? It is $79.99 after rebate with free shipping and I still have about $100 for a video card. With that psu I can try my hand at alittle overclocking following the guides in the forum. Marshmallow64 and Bobnova, thank you for the suggestions on video cards. I will search the linux forum and hopefully find one the is well supported. I can't wait to order my part as my machine has been sitting idle after I found out it would boot up and run the linux live CD.

For $100, get a 4850, newegg has 'em for ~$95 right now which is very cheap for a very good card. Makes my $90 (still) 4830 look a little silly.

A corsair 650 will happily run your CPU OCed to the wall as well as a $200-300 GPU or a couple lower end ones.

Thanks, Bobnova. I sure wanted a 4850 but I went with the nvidia gts 250 video card because of better linux driver support. I'm old (55) and try to keep things as simple and uncomplicated as possible. LOL
I'll get my machine running in about a week thanks to you all. And I'll continue learning as I read the posts on the forum. Take care