Throwing a 7950 into an underpower system

[Retic3nt]

Kind of hard to describe and google just has a bunch of gamers that want to throw a high end card in a 230w rig and expect it to work.

My situation is just a curious question, I've got a crappy system gathering dust in the corner (Athlon x2 240 I believe with 4gb ram and a Delta 250w power supply). Basically I thought I might turn it into a TV, music, and movies machine and Ive got a gigabyte 7950 sitting in a box. What do you all think the chances of putting it in the system and it actually work are? How high do you think the chances of burning out the PSU and everything else are from just turning it on?

Would like to mention the hardest thing this will be doing is 1080p youtube playback or VLC 1080p playback (whichever is technically heavier) and maybe web surfing. It's not life altering if I lose the system as I have a few extras laying around but if anyone can say for sure it wont work out of the gate that would be very much appreciated.

 

[COLGeek]

While this config (with the 7950) may power up, it won't last long. Expect, at a minimum, for the PSU to pass to the great beyond. The PSU may simply be too little to power-on the 7950. If so, you'll see the consequences pretty quickly.

I wouldn't expect this config to run, with the AMD drivers installed, at all, in terms of playing videos.

 

[jaslion]

Kind of hard to describe and google just has a bunch of gamers that want to throw a high end card in a 230w rig and expect it to work.

My situation is just a curious question, I've got a crappy system gathering dust in the corner (Athlon x2 240 I believe with 4gb ram and a Delta 250w power supply). Basically I thought I might turn it into a TV, music, and movies machine and Ive got a gigabyte 7950 sitting in a box. What do you all think the chances of putting it in the system and it actually work are? How high do you think the chances of burning out the PSU and everything else are from just turning it on?

Would like to mention the hardest thing this will be doing is 1080p youtube playback or VLC 1080p playback (whichever is technically heavier) and maybe web surfing. It's not life altering if I lose the system as I have a few extras laying around but if anyone can say for sure it wont work out of the gate that would be very much appreciated.

Yeah thats not going to work or it might boot but the moment the card gets used a tiny bit to much the pc will go out or even worse due to the low en psu it might even fry the whole system. I say DO NOT try it.

 

[Retic3nt]

While this config (with the 7950) may power up, it won't last long. Expect, at a minimum, for the PSU to pass to the great beyond. The PSU may simply be too little to power-on the 7950. If so, you'll see the consequences pretty quickly.

I wouldn't expect this config to run, with the AMD drivers installed, at all, in terms of playing videos.

Okay, would you think it would be any different if I pulled a 320w PSU from another build that has a single 6pin adapter and tried it that way?

 

[jaslion]

While this config (with the 7950) may power up, it won't last long. Expect, at a minimum, for the PSU to pass to the great beyond. The PSU may simply be too little to power-on the 7950. If so, you'll see the consequences pretty quickly.

I wouldn't expect this config to run, with the AMD drivers installed, at all, in terms of playing videos.

Okay, would you think it would be any different if I pulled a 320w PSU from another build that has a single 6pin adapter and tried it that way?

I do not recommend using an under powered psu. Sometimes the gpu can spike out of nowhere (just loading a webpage with adds can spike a gpu for a second) and this can still trip the psu. The lowest that I would safely go is a decent 400-450w psu.

 

[Barty1884]

The problem is a 7950 is a 200W card at load, and a 50W minimum...... 65W CPU, probably ~100W for the balance of the components.
While that setup is hardly going to be the most demanding or really able to push the 7950 much beyond it's minimum 50W power-draw, that will still likely be a pretty good strain on a 250W PSU.

If the PSU is "of the period" as an X2 240, it's ~10 years old and likely nowhere near capable of even the 250W anymore.

Chances of "burning out the PSU"? Probably 50/50 at a high level, but specifcis on the PSU will sway the odds.
"Everything else"? Depends on the quality of the PSUs protection - Delta can be good/bad/indifferent

I don't think anybody can reasonably say it will or won't work 100%, but my best guess is that it won't even post.

 

[Retic3nt]

While this config (with the 7950) may power up, it won't last long. Expect, at a minimum, for the PSU to pass to the great beyond. The PSU may simply be too little to power-on the 7950. If so, you'll see the consequences pretty quickly.

I wouldn't expect this config to run, with the AMD drivers installed, at all, in terms of playing videos.

Okay, would you think it would be any different if I pulled a 320w PSU from another build that has a single 6pin adapter and tried it that way?

I do not recommend using an under powered psu. Sometimes the gpu can spike out of nowhere (just loading a webpage with adds can spike a gpu for a second) and this can still trip the psu. The lowest that I would safely go is a decent 400-450w psu.

Alright, thank you for the help.

 

[COLGeek]

While this config (with the 7950) may power up, it won't last long. Expect, at a minimum, for the PSU to pass to the great beyond. The PSU may simply be too little to power-on the 7950. If so, you'll see the consequences pretty quickly.

I wouldn't expect this config to run, with the AMD drivers installed, at all, in terms of playing videos.

Okay, would you think it would be any different if I pulled a 320w PSU from another build that has a single 6pin adapter and tried it that way?

No, that PSU is not much better. You really need a quality 450w or higher PSU to be safe.