about to custom build a PC question

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bhxtyrant

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im about to custon build a PC but i have a quick question.ok first off here are the PC specs.
american media systems gtower CPU case
80mm cooling fan
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ processor
ASUS open box mother board
Creative labs sound blaster live sound card
geforce4 ti4200 graphics card
western digital 7200RPM 80GB hard drive
Samsung internal dvd/cd-rw drive combo
3GB DDR ram
now its always the most simple things i dont know about so heres my question for the pc im building what would be best a 300watt,350watt or 430watt power supply?might be a dumb question but i am a newbie to building PC's this will be my first one i build myself.thanks in advance hope for some answers:)
 
lol i got what you mean those are brand names but you misunderstood what i meant.i meant should i get a 300 watt power supply 350 or 430 ect.which would be the best one to use not brand but the wattage
 
thanx for replying thats the same thing i was thinking the higher the better now i have to ask what the highest power supply out so far?:)
 
well im usin the vatec 520watt

i think antec or enermax has a 550

and theres others at 650 i think
 
ok heres another stupid question whats the difference besides more power or is there any difference?such as able to connect more things ect.?
 
Usually the connection only varrie with manufacturer, but I say buy the biggest PSU you can afford.
 
i think im leaning towards the 430 watt for now. i will probally make upgrades in the future unless i decide to build another one.right now the PC i use is a 750Mhz duron so not much power there and with an outdated graphics card(vodoo2000 and tnt2)there isnt much i can do with this one so i figured ill custom build my own to my preferences
 
nah m8 you don't need the biggest psu unless you are building a server...

with your case kitted out fully and all kindsa devices plugged in a 300w should just be able to cut it with modern day rigs thats why you probably need to go 350 or so to avoid any glitches...

alienware is kitting out top of ITS line rigs with 340w psu's... they must be onto something.. anything over 300 is just peachy... you can get 500-600 watt psu or get duals but what the point?

buy an antec 430 or 400 and you should be happy enough...

you can connect more things without problems as you scale past 300 but how many things are you going to plug into your case?

I have more stuff than your list and I am running perfectly fine @ 400w... therefore something around there should be fine for you bhxtyrant...
 
the cpu case im going to use can have up to 11 devices(4 cd rom drive,floppy drive,zip drive,5 hard drives currently i have to 30 GB HDD and a 40GB im gonna get an 80 next so all of them will be in there since i will be using my PC for gaming but mainly work and burning dvd's ect i want lots of hard drive room.
 
This may be a mute point by this time, but with only a gf4 ti 4200 I personally would upgrade that to a radeon 9700 instead of having 3gb of ram (complete overkill at this point in time) and 4 cdroms. But hey we all have opinions.

Artex
 
You can use this to figure out what kind of min wattage you need then I would add about 50W at the min


AGP video card - 30-40W
PCI video card - 30W
AMD Athlon 900MHz-1.1GHz - 50W
AMD Athlon 1.2MHz-1.4GHz - 55-65W
AMD Duron 1.0MHz-1.3GHz - 50W
AMD Athlon 1.47MHz-1.73GHz - 75W
Intel Pentium III 800MHz-1.26GHz - 40W
Intel Pentium 4 1.4GHz-1.7GHz - 65W
Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz-2.0GHz - 75W
Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz-2.4GHz - 90W
Intel Celeron 1.0GHz-1.1GHz - 35W
Intel Celeron 1.2GHz-1.4GHz - 50W
ATX Motherboard - 35W-45W
128MB RAM - 10W
256MB RAM - 20W
24X or higher IDE CD-RW Drive - 35W
32X or higher IDE CD-ROM Drive - 25W
10x or higher IDE DVD-ROM Drive - 20W
SCSI CD-RW Drive - 17W
SCSI CD-ROM Drive - 12W
5,400RPM IDE Hard Drive - 10W
7,200RPM IDE Hard Drive - 13W
7,200RPM SCSI Hard Drive - 24W
10,000RPM SCSI Hard Drive - 30W
15,000RPM SCSI Hard Drive - 45W
Floppy Drive - 5W
Network Card - 4W
Modem - 5W
Sound Card - 5W
SCSI Controller Card - 20W
Firewire/USB Controller Card - 10W
Case Fan - 3W
CPU Fan - 3W
 
Originally posted by Artex
This may be a mute point by this time, but with only a gf4 ti 4200 I personally would upgrade that to a radeon 9700 instead of having 3gb of ram (complete overkill at this point in time) and 4 cdroms. But hey we all have opinions.

Artex
yes i was thinking the same thing 3 gigs is a little extreme i think ill down that to 1 gig or 1.5 gigs should be more then enough as for the radeon 9700 is it better then the geforce 4?like i said before im a beginner so i dont know all the top of the line products out there
 
Yeah a Radeon 9700 Pro smokes gf4 in all catergories, and as I said before 3 gigs of ram is overkill 1 will do fine . Winxp shows no gains once past 1 gig so put that money in your video card.

Artex
 
at the mo its the daddy but not by far and nvidia is planning a new relaese this winter by wat i heard and as for power supply id say 350w anything else is a waste of electricity and your money
 
As for the ps buy the biggest you can get. I started with 350, then I had to upgrade to 431 and eventually I needed 550. You never Know what your gonna be puttin in that thing a month down the road. As for the memory, dont go over a gig with xp
unless its registered. I tried a gig and a half and everything slowed down and games got real choppy. I run a gig and Ive never used all of it even with photoshop and autocad 2000 running at the same time. Good luck with your machine.
 
You never Know what your gonna be puttin in that thing a month down the road. [/B]
i think ill go with 400 or 430 just to be on the safe side because i already know ill be upgrading in the future.yes i definently know what you mean it seems like every five minutes theres something bigger,faster,better graphics ect ect.it gets to be a real pain because you have to be rich to keep up.thanks to everyone for the advice and knowledge
 
Speaking of ram, 3GB is overkill for Windows XP, it will not use that much, but, it's cool to have.
 

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