200 watt Pico power supply enough?

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tom2u

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Aug 26, 2010
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I'll be using an 1166 motherboard (full size Gigabyte ATX) with a core 2 duo CPU at about 2.5ghz. Can't remember the model numbers. Probably using 4gb of 1600mhz DDR3 ram on XP 32bit. Hard drives will be 1 SSD and 1 Sata 7200rpm 1tb. No optical drive, 2 fans. I've found that fans and hard drives don't make much difference so the main things are the motherboard, CPU and ram. Wondering if this could be powered by a Pico 200 watt power supply. And is there any way of supplementing that power with an AC adapter? I realize I could power the fans with an AC adapter but fans really draw almost no power. And I think the optical and hard drives require a more sophisticated power source than an AC adapter. I'm aiming for maximum power efficiency of course.
 
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PW-200-M can power most P4 motherboards running up to 3.0Ghz,CPU (Core2 duo ?thats iffy)u might be pushing it w/4gb ram, Personally I wouldn't U can get silent fanless 300 350 watt power supply's pretty cheap
I wont run a hair dryer with 200watts
 
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why would you want to use a pico 200 watt psu in that application?
 
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> PW-200-M can power most P4 motherboards running up to 3.0Ghz,

P4? Isn't that ancient? I'm using an 1166 which should be far more power efficient than a P4. Especially those single core CPU's they used to use several years ago. If that's what you were referring to.

Regarding efficiency, I realize PS's are getting more and more efficient but I wonder if anything is even close to the 95% efficiency of a Pico. I wonder if people use 2 of them every. One for the motherboard and one for the video card and everything else?

The video card is the Radeon 1gb 5450 which is very power efficient. Just using it for HD 1080p video. No editing yet. Just playback.

> I'm guessing on board graphics if not I defiantly wouldn't do it, even most cheap GPU's use 50 or more watts,

I can't remember the Radeon but I think its unusually low, like around 35 watts or so. But the motherboard does have a HDMI output so I could use a HDMI to DVI adapter with any decent monitor I guess and that should save some power.
 
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http://www.mini-box.com/PW-200M-DC-DC-power-supply
On the right side under Features they claim over 95% efficiency.

At the top: http://www.itxdepot.com/xcart/product.php?productid=2025&cat=37100&page=1

I just remembered that I can run the hard drives off an external enclosure power supply. With the fans on an AC adapter or perhaps pigging backing also on the enclosure's power, that will take a bit of the load off the system. The optical drive as well might be able to run off that or just run that on its own external power when needed. Most of us almost never use the optical drive anyway. USB drives can be run off a powered hub as well. If I use a card that uses power directly from the power supply instead of the motherboard I could use a Pico just for that, further lessening the load to the motherboard, especially if the motherboard didn't have built on video. And there are probably motherboards that use a lot less power in general than what I have presently. And same with the CPU. I didn't buy that solely based on power efficiency. Probably could have chosen that better too.

 
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jonnyguru seems very thorough. I thank you for that link. I would much rather use a traditional power supply that has more range if I can get the efficiency high enough. I'll read more on this. Maybe the Pico sellers are just bending the truth a bit. Are there other reviews out there testing the efficiency of the Pico units? And, as Johnnyguru points out, the power brick used is crucial for its performance as well as its efficiency. I never knew that before either. Considering the cost of both, I'm leaning towards a very efficient, traditional power supply I think.
 
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What are you talking about? Power supply vendors NEVER bend the truth with their claims. That 580w sunbeam for $20 is on the level, right? Right? They wouldn't lie to us on their marketing, would they? 🙁
 
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Not in my world they wouldn't! :) Otherwise they'd get in twubble!
Thanks for the heads up again. its so good to find a site that specializes in a particular area of computing hardware. It can make a big difference.
 
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Well I was told it was very power efficient and that is very power efficient! I don't do any gaming but I will be doing video editing (1080p). Not sure if that will work but we'll see. Guess I need a lean photo editor.
 
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