How far a 250watt power supply will really go!

[Snuffy!]

Ok, this is for all you people that whine about getting a huge power supply when adding anything extra. This is what I have running off my 250watt power supply.

1 x 17" Monitor

3 x hard drives
~ 10.2gb
~ 6.4gb (This is in a h/d caddy)
~ 3.2gb (This runs off a ATA 66 card)

2 x cd-roms
~ DVDx6/32x cd-rom
~ 32x cd-rom

1 x Floppy Disk Drive

Geforce

Celeron 600 @ 954

7 x case fans
1 x Golden Orb Fan
5 x mini fans

And we're chugging along fine. So the lesson is, don't underestimate how much power the 250watt can dish out! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Snuffy!

[Ed_S]

They'll pull more than some may think, but you CAN overdo one, and based on my experience you're just about there!

Very similar setup, power wise, and mine started eating 250's when I added the 3rd cd drive, along with the 3 HD's.
First one died shortly after the drive went in, second one lasted a couple months. Both failed on start up, when the drives are all sucking up power at the same time.


====
How far will it go?? Last one flew about 50 - 60 ft!! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
But that was from a second floor window, so the height was a factor. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

As soon as I fry this 300 I'll let you know how far it goes!! Been OK nearly a year so far.

Ed

[Dputiger]

Your CPU is what's saving you there--the Celeron doesn't draw nearly what the Athlon, Duron, or T-bird do. Plug one of those in and see what happens. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[bigslammer]

My 250w seems to hold up fine even in with a dual cpu setup

abit bp6 dual celeries @572mhz 2.0 volts each

2 cpu fans, fan on video card heatsink, fan on bx chipset, two case fans

hp 8x4x32 crw
dvd rom

two ibm 7200rpm 13.5gb HD

two mobile racks with one fan on each

two nics

creatives labs tnt2

aureal vortex sound card

56k modem

wintv usb, MS sidewinder USB

kds-vs-190 19inch mon.

and I'm sure that 250w is more than enough when I add another HD

[linux_guru]

OK, here's what I've got on my 250w Linux box:

Cyrix (IBM) PR200+
256Mb Fast Page ram
Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro
Isa SB-16
3Com 905TX fast ether
PCI Symbios Logic fast wide scsi
2 x IDE HDD
2 x SCSI HDD
1 x SCSI CD-Rom
1 x SCSI Dat Drive
1 x SCSI internal Zip

She hums along nicely, year after year !

[Snuffy!]

I've got 4 spare 250watt power supplies as well, from all those **** cases i've bought http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
The power supply I am using now is pretty dodgy though. I've made numerous modifications to it too http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif Like instead of buying y-cable power splitters to add more devices, I usually just add some more connectors by pulling apart the cables, and adding them.

Yeah, any lower than 250, i'd be very wary of, cause my friend had a 200watt that died with stuff all connected to it.

I don't think i'll add anything more to my power supply though, I think it's reached its limit.