Original Message ----- 
From: "John Pinter" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 9:55 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Power Supply Capacity


I'm interested in adding an internal ZIP drive, and a required additional IDE controller for it, to a tower PC.  The machine already has a (seldom used) 3.5" floppy drive, an 80 GB and a 40 GB hard drive, a CD R/W drive, and a CD/DVD R/W drive.  The unit has a 350 Watt power supply and I'd just like to do a sanity check on whether I'd be stretching the limits of the supply if I add the ZIP drive and controller card.  That is, where can I get ballpark figures on how much power  the above collection of hardware is using?  
Thanks for any advice here.


$$$


Good Morning John,

I'm unable to supply you with numbers, but I can tell you anecdotally that a seven year old Dell Dimension 4100 XPS-Z I own and still use has the same basic hardware setup that you describe above including a high-end (for that era) graphics card and high-end (for that era) sound card and it all runs just fine with the original, stock 200W Dell power supply.

The computer delivered from Round Rock with all the equipment you reference above except the DVD burner which replaced the orginal CD-ROM only drive, a second hard drive and the PCI IDE card to make it all work (as you know, a standard PC can only support four IDE devices and my setup has five IDE devices hence the need for the PCI IDE controller). I've also added a 5-port high speed USB 2.0 PCI card and occasionally plug-in an external USB Zip Drive, USB external hard drive and USB pocket flash drive. All without complaint from the machine.

Your 350W power supply has approx. 175% of the capacity of mine, so I should think you'll be fine based on my experience.

Other on the list may offer better methods to calculate numbers but if you must have numbers to make you feel comfortable with your setup, I would look up the power needs of each individual piece of hardware when fully loaded/utilized, add them all up to get a 'worst case' scenario number and compare that final number with what your power supply capable of putting out.

My gut feeling is you're 'GOOD TO GO' with your current power supply.

HTH. I am,

Very truly yours,
Jeffrey Ottie


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