Large enough power supply?

[BurningIce]

Hi there,

I would like to find out if my power supply will be good enough for what I want to do... Its a 450Watt power supply

I currently have a e5200 Dual-Core 2.5Ghz CPU on my motherboard along with a Geforce 8500GT graphics card, 1GB of DDR2 Ram and a 250GB SATA HDD. My case has has 1 40mm fan and 2 120mm LED fans.

My current configuration is working 100%

My question is, will my power supply still be enough if I add a 500GB or 1000GB SATA HDD along with 1-2GB of extra ram? (single ram chip)

So yeah will my power supply be able to handle the extra hardware or will I have to get myself a larger power supply?

Any help will be much appreciated

Thanks, Tristan

 

[delluser1]

450 watts is plenty, even with the upgrades you are considering, quality should be your concern.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Saying you have a 450W PSU means next to nothing. WHICH 450W PSU do you have? I guess it doesn't really matter if it's been powering the system until now. Hard drives and RAM hardly use any power at all so if it worked before, it will work after adding a HD and more RAM.

 

[banthracis]

a HD won't use more than 10W, RAM about 5W.

You can easily figure get an estimate of your needs from this calculator
http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

 

[BurningIce]

Thanks you guys already guess I'll throw in a extra HHD and more RAM.

By the way, just for interest, what takes up all the watts of the power supply? Is it the CPU and graphics card along with fans?

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Graphics cards usually use the most power followed by the CPU, chipsets, etc...