is a 300watt power supply 'typically' large enough for most home PCs?

[rnmcd]

I am looking at the Seasonic Super Tornado 300.

Do you think that I might need more watts if the rig I am building is basically a 'standard' home PC except that it has a dual-monitor video card, a second hard drive, and a second optical drive?

Do Pentium processors need more wattage than AMD?

thanks.

 

[Blaizer2]

300 Watts is pretty much the standard these days. If your not gonna power a toaster or something similar, 300W will do.

 

[mattg1981]

I personally would go 350 minimum for your setup ... there used to be a psu calculator where you would put in all your accesories and it would calculate and tell you exactly what you needed, but I cant find that bookmark anywhere

 

[DownloadThis]

the calculator is here: http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/
According to the calculation, even my PC, which has 6 drives only required 346 watts of power. Much less than the 430watt PSU i am currently using. Better to be safe than sorry though, right?

 

[grrl]

300-350 should be fine. You should also realize that you won't be using each component at the same time. The wattage calculators give you the theoretical max, not a normal running 'load'.

 

[0roo0roo]

seasonics rating are very conservative. the peak ratings are much higher. so unless your system is a monster it should be fine. seasonic=very quiet my seasonic 300 is running 4hd's 2 opticals, 1gb ram, 2.2ghz barton oc, 3 pci cards...5 case fans....

reviews on silentpcreview.com the fan speed control actually works unlike most others which only start off silent..then just stay high

 

[RaNDoMMAI]

dont forgot that alot of power SFF machines run off of little 200W PSU, seriously, my friend has a 6800 and 2 HDD and a optical drive and it is running off his 250 silentx PSU. Shocked me

~RaNDoM

 

[Tremulant]

That calulator says I only need 249 watts. I have a sparkle 380w PSU though, but I have been thinking of getting an Antec 350, just because it has an extra fan on it.

 

[Cerb]

150w is enough for most PCs. But many 400w supplies are crap. Can't we sticky one of these threads?

 

[caz67]

The more juice the better.