300W psu enough?

[marco]

I built up an AMD Athlon 64 bit computer. Got all specs from technician. Put it together and all works well except the 300W power supply gets very hot. Is this perhaps under wattage? The fan works ok. How hot do they normally get?
I have nothing connected to my USB ports and only have 256mb Graphics card.
By the way it only gets hot when watching DVD's with 5.1 speakers.
Any help?

 

[hj2k_x]

Post the exact specs of your machine - exactly what you have running off it - and I am sure someone will help you out

300W will not be enough in a lot of circumstances....

 

[d0b33]

My AMD Athlon 64 does not use more than 150W under full load like gaming so I believe it should be fine.

 

[marco]

Gigabyte MB compatable for
AMD Athlon 64 bit CPU.
HD Drive
Sound Card
Graphics Card 256MB
CD RW
DVD/CD RW
Stiffy Drive
5.1 Surround Sound System
That's it.

 

[kwaggawerner]

Go here.... It's a PSU calculator:

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

From the specs you gave, 300 should be enough, but my guess it will be borderline... it also depends on stuff like, is you sound, onboard or external, how fast is you HDD, etc...


and yes, PSU's do get hot. If your PC is using more power than what the PSU allows, the PC will reboot continuously, or wont power on.... The most power is used the first few seconds while the system boots...


It should also be noted that, as PSU's get older, and especially if its a cheaper/generic PSU, the output power, will decrease a bit, over time. Example, I have a 500watt PSU, and it's generic/no name, It's been powering a PC for almost 8 Months straight, I used a amp/voltage tester a few weeks ago, and the power output has dropped by a few percent, say 5-8%. It's not much, but it's a drop nonetheless.

Hope this answers a few questions, If you need some more answer, feel free to PM me, or do a Google search. Like: http://www.google.co.za/search?hl=en&q=PSU+voltage+drops+over+time&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

 

[howardb]

I had very similar specs to yours on my old PC, also with a 300W PSU - it rebooted every so often and ran fairly warm (24/7) -- once I changed to a 450w PSU, there were no further issues and it ran much cooler...

 

[The_Techie]

I'd actually recommend a good-quality 400W+ PSU, but you might just get away with the 300W But I wouldn't recommend using the 300W, though.

 

[Ou grote]

Your graphics card may chow some watts, esp if it's an nvidia.

 

[hj2k_x]

I'd actually recommend a good-quality 400W+ PSU, but you might just get away with the 300W But I wouldn't recommend using the 300W, though.

I agree. 300W is like running XP with 256MB RAM. It'll work, but a little upgrade will make all the difference

 

[spidaman]

Im using a 300W, but it keeps booting up, so its clearly not enough for me!