PSU Question for emergency upgrade

Morninglord

My girlfriend's a8n-sli mobo fan stopped working again so we decided to make a quickie upgrade of cpu, ram, mobo to get rid of this problem forever.
Thing is we have time constraints and severe money constraints so are using a spare mobo and our upgrade is centered around it. So here is the system.

Mobo: GA-P35-DS3 (the spare mobo)
CPU: E6300 2.8ghz FSB 1066
Card: 6600 with passive heatsink
Ram: 2x1gb Kingston DDR2-800
2x SATA hdd (one is a hitachi 320gb, other is the old systems sata hdd)
1xDVD-RW/CD-RW combined drive
1x floppy

All she uses it for is basically word, internet, a few games now and again (she's not really into games that much). Possibly some mmos in the future?
She does a little bit of photo editing on it, etc.

For now though, she just wants a working system to get through the rest of this semester, so games aren't that important.

Trouble is the PSU is some generic 400W and I don't know if it'll handle it.
It's +12v reading is 17a.
I think it should since it's old parts but I want to be sure. I don't know how to really double check a psu, the info kind of goes over my head.

Cheers

Mmmm... Cocks...

I'd say so, I'm only rockin' 500w on my new rig.

But I don't know shit on the 12v and your amps and what not.

travathian

I have a 380W PSU and a way better system than that.

Barrakketh

travathian wrote: »

I have a 380W PSU and a way better system than that.

No-name PSUs are crap, though.

travathian

Without knowing who manufactured it, there's no way to tell. It being "generic" doesnt mean its a PoS, maybe its just a brand he hasnt heard of before.

Morninglord

So you can't tell from the specifications on the side?
Eg the +12v rail, which I thought was the most important, is 17a. Is this enough? Not enough? For generics this is actually a big fat lie? I don't really know anything about them.

Would you recommend a Vantec 460w psu? I've heard a lot of people recommend them on an australian technology site I've successfully used to get information from in the past, they just aren't answering any questions for some reason and I'm in a hurry.

What about if I take a stick of ram (it's ddr2 800) from mine, pop it in, see if it runs? (ram is the last thing we need to buy)
Or will this risk frying something? I didn't think it was that big of an upgrade since none of the tech is top of the line.

Her last one was 4 years old.

there's no brand marking on the case or psu, but there is a TT on the top left of the specifications sticker.
Otherwise it just says ATX-400.

Rohan

It should be alright. My friends and I have been using generic 250w-400w PSU's for years, with more powerful components than that system, and I have no idea what to know about the 12v rail stuff (and I've been building computers for years). I mean, if I'm building a new machine and I need a new PSU I'll have a look of what's available on my favourite online store, pick one based on user reviews on the website, then look at reviews online. I've only done that twice - once for my current machine which is a gaming beast (NorthQ Godzilla 500w), and again for my flat-mate's machine which is a rendering monster (AXP 630w).

Every other pc we have in our group (media pc, three gaming pc's) are running on generic 350w-450w PSU's, and one of them on a no-name 400w runs a Core 2 Duo with a GeForce 8800 GTS. So really, you shouldn't have problems with that PSU.