Originally posted by: Leonardi
What kind of power supply should I get with this motherboard and this system:
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego
2gb of Corsair ValueSelect RAM
eVGA Geforce 7800GTX
2x hd SATA Seagate 300gb
X-Fi Elite Pro sound card
LG DVD-ROM/Burner
I'm thinking of getting a 420W ATX 2.0 power supply, would it be enough?
Yes, I think a 420W would be enough, though if you can find a name brand, well reputed
480 or 500 on sale for not too much more money, I'd go for that.
I decided on an Antec TruePower 2.0 480W which was on sale for like $70 after rebate.
In the past I picked up a Maddog 500W PSU for $50 or so.
It's slightly heretical to post a DFI link in an ASUS thread, but this forum topic does
have some good listings of relatively well reputed power supplies:
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10854
The 7800GTX almost certainly uses a special auxiliary 6-pin "pci express power connector"
cable that plugs right into it from the system power supply. It takes its extra power from
+12V. As I recall from my XFX 7800 series manual the 7800GTX should be budgeted
around 240 Watts just for its own power, and 250W for a SLI pair of them.
Anyway check your card, maybe EVGA gives you an adaptor to convert a 4-pin
flopppy or "hard drive" Molex input from the PSU to the 6-pin PCI-Express auxiliary power
connector, and if that's so you can use that if you have a spare input of those types
from your PSU. Otherwise and probably preferably look for a PSU with one or two
dedicated 6 pin PCI Express auxiliary power connectors available on it.
Eventually the prices will come down on the 7800GTX and maybe in time you'll want to
get another one for a SLI pair of them as that becomes more necessary to keep up
with the games and so on. If that's a consideration you may want to get something
like a SLI certified PSU that puts out a bit over 500W (510? 550? etc.) rather than
having an underpowered expensive PSU that couldn't handle that upgrade.
Also this motherboard takes a 24-pin ATX connector, so get one that natively supports
that without a cable adaptor.
Look for a combined +12V rail rating of well over 24 Amps, preferably 30A to 36A or
a bit more. If there are two +12V rails then you can probably add the ratings of each
one to compare it against other PSUs having only a single +12V rail.
I'd provbably be very scared to pay less than $50 and would balk at paying much more
than $80 for a "non SLI" PSU and maybe under $120 for a real name brand high quality
SLI certified 500+ watt PSU; look for Antec et. al. sales at Fry's / outpost.com etc.
Also consider whether features like integrated thermally sensitive case / PSU fan controls
in the PSU may be to you. I like the idea, but my box runs a little hot with the
Antec 480 since it turns down its fans to a very quiet speed at the expense of keeping the
PC about 8C hotter than it might otherwise be. The Maddog is nice in that it has buttons
to let you manually pick the PSU fan speed, though it has no integrated control for the
case fan too.
Good luck!