Is my power supply good enough?

Brian McHugh

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Mar 11, 2013
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10,510
I have a 480 watt power supply in my dell xps 8500.
The computer has an intel i7 3770, 4 4gb ddr3 sticks, a 6gb/s 2tb hard drive.

I am looking to upgrade my graphics card to a Radeon 7970 and run 3 monitors off the system, and according newegg, I need at least a 500 watt power supply. Using the website http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/Power to figure out my required wattage (using the specs above, as well as the new card that I will be installing) to only be about 400 watts. So my question is, do I need to upgrade my power supply? If I don't upgrade my power supply, will it damage other components?

Thanks for your help!
 
Likely it will not damage other components if it cannot provide the needed power but there is that possibility. You can attempt to run the card with your current PSU (I won't recommend it though) and it may run just fine but, any shutdowns under load would surely indicate to me that the PSU would then need to be upgraded.
Hope it helps
 


Hi - realhardtech suggests a quality 550w psu, your's might work, however -
but you need to check a couple of things 1st. Check the label affixed to
the PSU, and look for the amps listed for the +12v rail(s), this is the most
important spec. If you have more than 30a(38a if you are going to stress test)
max combined on the +12v rail you can run your sys. You will most likely need
a molex to pci-e adapter as I don't believe your PSU will have a 6pin and a 6+2pin
that the 7970 requires.

Bottom line; you might get by, but probably should upgrade to a quality 550 unit.

 

tommox123

Honorable
Mar 13, 2013
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10,510
HI,Is your computer is the laptop,if it is the laptop,i believe i can help you,Because i know a wbsite:www.tommox.com ,It has large information about it what you want to know,If is is not laptop,I am sorry,i can't help you.