I have this little Shuttle small form factor computer that I won off of Ebay... I put two cards in it and am running four Samsung 19" LCD monitors (970P)...The Shuttle has a little 200W power supply...I am thinking of an Antec 450 watt... what do you guys think?..I do not know if it will fit ... I am thinking of pulling out the power supply and driving down with it to MicroCenter and check... this little shit is faster than my 8250! ES
The monitors are not taxing at all to the PSU.... only the video card(s). MicroCenter probably won't have a PSU to fit your case. They carry only (almost), basic and standard stuff.
He's right. You didn't say which cards you installed. The exception would be PCIEx16 cards which DO require a separate PS connection and a minimum of 550 watts.
I am ready to install a second dual connection video card. (Nvidia GeForce MX400 128mb PCI) I am doing this to be able to hook up a third monitor...and possibly # 4 down the road. Do I need to upgrade my 250 watt power supply ? and if so...how much? T.M.
PCIE 2.0 will be out sometime later this year. Why not give up on a new box until then. Newer chips by then, 45nm, faster speeds, less noise from outrageous fan speeds for cpu and also for those tiny stupid chipset fans. Should be faster memory by then, larger frontside bus, larger cache, etc. We are dead in the water right now for new stuff..........but STILL being caught in a traffic jam at the hard drive relative to how fast we can zoom up the the road construction site.. Besides, maybe by then VISTA might have something convincing in a service pack to upgrade. ha, other guy is right, NVS rocks fora trading machine that runs all day ...........less heat generated. PS, get the hacksaw out and make the case fans BIGGER, they draw in more air and you run them at far less speeds, which is nice and QUIET.
ES, I have a Biostar iDEQ (same size as Shuttle) and I'm running a Matrox low profile QID card, a lightscribe drive and 2-500 gig HD's. My power supple is 320Watts and it's perfect. If you have any problem finding one to fit your box, let me know I have 4 replacements.
Can't tell for sure, but adding such a card should only add about 20-30 watts usage. To verify the need to change PSUs, you need to measure the wattage your system is using at full load or estimate it. Search the net and you can find some free "estimaters". Or, if you just want to upgrade and to a less noisy PSU, there are lots of well priced, 350-400 watt available.
We have computer at work that has a 300 watt power supply. A friend of mine has a 256mb AGP 4X video card that he doesn't need and will give us. Would the card be ok w/that PSU, running one LCD monitor? The system has one 20 gig hd and 2 dvd players installed, if that makes any difference on the power consumption. Thanks, Harold