Question 320 watt PSU enough for gaming?

[kiwi3751]

I have a HP EliteDesk 800 G1 TWR with a build in PSU. I have read it's not replacable. I used a kill a watt device to measure my pc power comsumption. The max power consumption hit max 190 watts while benchmarking shadow of war on very high settings. I was just wondering if my measurement seems off and if I can upgrade my GPU or CPU safely. I heard you should get at least a 500 watt PSU for gaming.

These are my specs

• Intel i7-4770 3.40 GHz
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
• 16 Gb DDR3 ram
• 320 Watt PSU

 

[salm2s]

A 320 watt psu is definitely not enough for gaming, especially with a gtx 1060 6gb. On nVidia's site, the MINIMUM watts required is 400 watts.

 

[Satan-IR]

Did the PC come with the 1060 or did you replace/add that?

Systems with 1060 use around 250W as it's a power-efficient card.

If that 190W reading is correct and the PSU can really deliver 320W you're sort of OK although it would be cutting it close a bit especially as OEM PSUs are usually made for the load they're supposed to handle out of the box. A 400-450W PSU is better for a system like yours.

I wouldn't upgrade CPU or GPU with that PSU though.

Can you take a picture of the PSU sticker/label upload somewhere and post a link here?

 

[kiwi3751]

I bought it with The GPU, but The Company sell The same model with different hardware inside.

This is my PSU
https://ibb.co/Gs5D0HC

 

[jankerson]

I bought it with The GPU, but The Company sell The same model with different hardware inside.

This is my PSU
https://ibb.co/Gs5D0HC

So you bought a reburb with a 9+ year old PSU that you can't change out because it's proprietary.

NO, don't even think about putting the GTX 1060 in it.

Bad idea all the way around to even think about it.

Best advice is send it back and get you money back and get something else.

 

[Satan-IR]

I bought it with The GPU, but The Company sell The same model with different hardware inside.

This is my PSU
https://ibb.co/Gs5D0HC

That's what I wanted the picture for because some OEM compoters come with half decent PSUs and most of them come with fire hazards like that; well to cut costs for the company and increase profit margins. A good quality PSU with 320W on two 12V rails might be able to pull it off with a non-OC 4770 and a GTX 1060. Not this one and I'd say you've been lucky so far.

However, that PSU's OEM is AcBel Polytech which is known for making horrible quality PSUs. I would not recommend powering and running that setup even without the graphics card with that PSU.

Actually any system with PSUs from that manufacturer is at constant risk because when low-quality bad PSU like those fail they blow other components with them and first victims are usually motherboards and/or graphics cards.

As you say it's usually not replaceable because those PSUs come with proprietary connectors for motherboard/CPU and if replaced with PSU's with standard ATX connectors sometimes the user can use adapters to connect the PSU to motherboard etc and sometimes it can not be done.

I would suggest that you use the CPU RAM GPU and storage devices and get a compatible motherboard (Haswell compatible chipsets are B85 Q85 H81 Q87 H87 Z87 H97 Z97; although at this stage you'd probably have to get a used one and with a non-K CPU Z-series boards are kind of pointless).

You'd need a good-quality 450W PSU, or to have some head room and possible future upgrades it's won't hurt to get a good-quality solid 550W unit; those come with 7-10 year warranty.