What PSU should i get? Is 500Watts good enough?

Question

Getting:
Seagate barracuda 250GB, 8mb cache, SATA300
asus m2n-e
athlon x2 5400
1 DVD burner and 1 floppy
2gb ram
cool master TX2 cpu cooler
US Modular Qimonda Chrome S25 Video Card
cheap case (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2078839&sku=TC3J-4505)
vista home premium

yea... i know graphics card suck ( i dont have enough $$) but im not gonna use comp for high end games, only gonna use for light games like WoW and cs, homework, and web surfing

im getting a Ultra / X-Connect V-Serie 500watt psu. is this good enough?

ALSO CAN ANYONE CHECK IF ALL PARTS ARE COMPATIBLE WITH EACH OTHER?

if i do need to mention this... im gonna get three 80mm fans

Answer 1

I have learned not to rely on the total wattage of a power supply. That can be deceitful. What you would want would be one with "dual 12v rails" around 20 Amps on each. The PS you are looking at has one 12 Volt rail with 28 Amps. This PS should be fine and work with your system but adding any more hard drives or burners will quickly make it fail. Good luck and remember that power supplies are not something to be cheap with.

Answer 2

For that system even a 350w-400w psu will be more than enough. Although I recommend at least a 450w-500w psu as you later down on the road you might want to get a better graphics card but find out that you need to replace the psu again.

If you haven't got much money for a graphics card then rather get this instead, better and more reliable.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127285
or this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102100

Chances are the current card you want to get won't be that great for even old games. Those cards above aren't for high-end gaming but should meet your needs and are better for the price and is better than what you have chosen now.

Don't cheap out on the psu, there is more to watts, These are much better quality psu's and also taking into consideration you are short on money.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104953
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341012

And if you do decide to spend that extra little bit which is worth it then get this at least.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003

everything else seems fine just change the graphics card and get a better power supply unit, don't skimp on the power supply with all those other good parts.

Answer 3

500W is probably even overkill for this system. Recent processors (at least Intel's, I'm not sure on AMD) actually draw less power than their older counterparts. It can't hurt to be on the safe side though, and sometimes higher-wattage power supplies are nice just because they use more reliable components. 500W should be fine; I wouldn't shell out the extra bucks for a bigger PSU unless you intend to upgrade to a very high-power graphics card in the near future.

Answer 4

PSU is MORE than enough and should run cool 24x7.

X2 5400 is just an 89 watter. HDD or CD drive draw less than 10W. Your 2 sticks RAM will consume about 15W, video card less than 20W. Typical fans consume less than 5 watts, high powered fans almost double.

I bet your set up will never exceed 200W power draw on the wall outlet.

Answer 5

I would recommend you go slightly higher than 500watt (purely to provide you with a bit extra for any devices you may well add in the future).

I am more concerned at your decision to go with a unknown graphics card/GPU manufacturer. You are going to have endless problems trying to get that hardware to:
(1) work with existing games [to a decent level] and
(2) finding drivers and updates for use with latest games/software/graphics frameworks.

You are better off going with a cheap/budget lower-end card from NVIDIA (for example) than a completely unknown entity.

I hope this helps!

N.B: Please make sure your RAM is DDR2 (PC2-4300, PC2-6400 or PC2-5300)!

Answer 6

Probably, but I'm using 650's as my minimum now.

Answer 7

That should be enough.