Difference between 350W and 500W PSU

[AlikanSparkes]

Hi

I have recently bought a Asus GTX 560Ti.

It has dual fans, and apparently is very good.
Everyone, including the box says it requires a minimum of 500W PSU to work. It has two Power input ports.

I have bought a 350W PSU, and connected everything in my computer, including both card power ports.

I have noticed, some things are more sluggish than my very old previous card.

- Firefox smooth scrolling is juddering
- Games that have been proven on YouTube to work very well with the card, don't work well
- The Windows magnifying application (Comes with Win7) reduces screen FPS so drastically, I can't use it.

Is there a difference between a 350W and 500W PSU? Is the difference more power cables, or more power in the cables?

Thanks!

Marcus

p.s. By power cables, I mean the different connectors that you connect to the motherboard, hard drive, CD drive to give it power. Thanks a lot!

 

[unksol]

The difference is it should be capable of delivering more power. If you can't provide enough power you will cause all sorts of system problems, crashes, sluggishness, or the PSU may overload, self destruct and possibly destroy your entire computer, or worse.

You should not be running a 560Ti on a 350W PSU. If it even is capable of delivering 350W

 

[manofchalk]

If you want to get technical, Watts are a unit of power and mean 1 joule (unit of energy) is dissipated every second. So a 350W can supply up to 350 joules to the machine every second. A 500W can give 500 joules every second.
Quite literally, it is more powerful.

A more powerful unit will have more connectors, since it will be expected to handle greater loads. No point having a 1000W Supply with only the ATX cables, you would never be able to use its potential and would be useless to anyone who does need that much power.

You need a more powerful PSU, otherwise the machine will stay sluggish and over time the PSU being under heavy load can damage the components.

 

[AlikanSparkes]

Thank you very much!

 

[AlikanSparkes]

Best answer selected by AlikanSparkes.