Running a 3870 on 300 watt power supply

jonny72

I have a PC with a crappy motherboard, core2duo e6400 2.1 ghz proc and a 300 watt power supply.. think it would be possible to run a Sapphire 3870 on this?

Its a single slot card if that helps

uberpixie

jonny72 wrote: »

I have a PC with a crappy motherboard, core2duo e6400 2.1 ghz proc and a 300 watt power supply.. think it would be possible to run a Sapphire 3870 on this?

Its a single slot card if that helps

you might get away with it, but 300W is very low.

Granted my brothers have an FSP 350W power supply and they are running a 8800GT, core2duo etc on it without any issues.

It comes down to how good a quality 300W you have.

PogMoThoin

How many hd's and drives? 300W is fairly pushing it tho

Cuddlesworth

If you did get it to work the power supply would be under 100% load when gaming(100watts system minimum, 200watts for card). And from most tests with power supplys they tend not to work at 100% for extended periods without blowing up. So I would say get another power supply.

jonny72

thanks for the replies..

its a generic power supply from a HP pavillion desktop PC..

Its just running one HDD and one dvd drive..

The motherboard is quite poor so I think the graphics card would be somewhat bottlenecked anyway, but the 7900GS has trouble with the 22 inch monitor..

So I might go with a new PSU.. are they hard to install?

uberpixie

jonny72 wrote: »

thanks for the replies..

its a generic power supply from a HP pavillion desktop PC..

Its just running one HDD and one dvd drive..

The motherboard is quite poor so I think the graphics card would be somewhat bottlenecked anyway, but the 7900GS has trouble with the 22 inch monitor..

So I might go with a new PSU.. are they hard to install?

PSUs are not too hard to install, you just have to remember plug in anything that needs power after you have fitted the new psu.
you always forget something and have to open the case again before you get it right :-)

The only issue you might have is that some computer makers use non standard power supplies/motherboards that are not compatible with an off the shelf regualr sized PSU.

What PC do you have? Who made it?

Overheal

jonny72 wrote: »

thanks for the replies..

its a generic power supply from a HP pavillion desktop PC..

Its just running one HDD and one dvd drive..

The motherboard is quite poor so I think the graphics card would be somewhat bottlenecked anyway, but the 7900GS has trouble with the 22 inch monitor..

So I might go with a new PSU.. are they hard to install?

ah its not one of those feckin tiny black boxes is it?



How do you know the ATi card will fit?

Sqaull20

The waiting game is dangerous but Ati and Nvidia have new cards out in 2 or 3 weeks that dont need external power from the power supply.They will be around the same power as the HD3850/8800gs, 60 or €70 and you wont need to get a new power supply.

I would wait.

Edit: Komplett have one of these cards on order for €72 ( you will get cheaper near at launch ), other one 9550gt will be out soon after.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=374861

jonny72

Nah the case isn't tiny, a bit of a squeeze with the connectors..

I think I'll go with one of these new ATI cards, they seem to fit the niche..

Also, whats the story with passive cards.. I see that HWV has 9600's and 9800's that are passive.. do they use a lot less power? or will they just be monstrous cards?

BadCharlie

I think you will be able to run the video card in your machine as long as you don't overclock anything. But also might depend on quality of PSU.

My Rig 3 takes at most 260watt off power will playing games.
Thats a Qx9650 @ 3840mhz and GTS video card also clocked.
4 Harddrives & one DVD player.