Would I need to upgrade my Power Supply Unit?
The RAM sounds good, but a little more won't hurt. Do you have a third party memory manager to keep your RAM clear of information that has been written to it that is no longer needed to run the programs in use? Now, as far as a power supply is concerned, most of the electronics in your computer run on 5 volts. It isn't the volts that you need to be concerned with, since this is a voltage level to be found for all PC's. Your concern is the number of AMPS that the power supply can provide to run the computer. You need to know what the new cards are going to demand in terms of amps. My best guess, get the highest output, in watts, that you can lay your hands on for your computer. It will have to be designed to fit in the case you are using. Those "watts" are derived from a fairly simple electrical formula. That formula is the number of amps multiplied by the given voltage. 50 amps mutiplied by 5 volts would give an answer of 250 watts. The power supply rating will not be just for the 5 volt supply section. Some of it will be for the 12 volt supply section as well. Leave off the engineering of supply rails and such as that unless you really want to know. All of that is jargon used to confuse and try to make the person using it look smart. Just find the power supply with the highest power rating that you can find, and you should be all right for the time you have specified. Just one point here to reassure. If the total draw from the new stuff is, lets say 400 watts, and you bought a 450 watt supply, there is nothing to be concerned about. You will not get the full 450 watts delivered to your computer. The computer will only draw what it needs in Amps, and no more. Electricity is "lazy", it will onlt do the work required of it and no more. So you do not need to be concerned with any kind of over load from to large of a power supply. You can email me if you have any other questions about power supply issues.
Do I need to upgrade my PSU?
I have recently done an upgrade on a Dell Dimension 1100 desktop. The system was a 2.8GHZ, 256MB RAM, 80GB IDE Drive and integrated intel extreme 2 graphics. After the upgrade the system is now 3.2GHZ (new processor not overclocking), 2GB RAM, 256MB Geforce Graphics card and I am awaiting delivery of a new 500GB IDE drive. I haven't changed over the stock PSU which was installed at build by Dell. Is it essential I add an uprated PSU? I've been running the system, minus the upgraded hard drive, for 4 weeks now and have had no problems whatsoever. Any advice greatly appreciated.
Do i need to upgrade my PowerSupply?
I don't think the backup generator for my house puts out that much power. Where do you get one of those power supplies? Did you mean 350W? If so, you should upgrade to a 750W supply. Everyone will say that it's too much for your system, but look at the price breaks. It will power your system now, it will power your system after the upgrade - even if you decide to add two video cards - and say goodbye to DVD coasters. You can get a good deal on a quality 750W PSU at Newegg for not much more money than a 400W or 600W PSU.
For the sheer joy of PC building!Nah, if that were the case you wouldn't have asked this question. So I gather that it is more of a ‘need-based’ thing for you. Okay.See, you never actually ‘need’ to upgrade your PC unless you start encountering softwares with higher system requirements than your rig. Or say, you have a crappy old system (like mine presently) which breaks down every time you expect something from it. Or another case may be, that you buy some high end component while the other parts become a bottleneck.The best way to go is - upgrade whenever you see a potential problem which may hinder your work (gaming :p). Frequent upgrades will make your rig run like a charm. One thing - I'm not asking you to shell out loads of cash on expensive hardware every now and then! What I mean by ‘frequent upgrades’ is -You see you've got an 8 gig ram stick. But you've recently gotten into content creation and ‘need’ another ram stick. Go get one with the same frequency and you're done! That's just 40 USD for an 8 gig DDR4 stick.You have a beefy graphics card which gives you humongous frame rates (well above 100) on your current setup. Why not use that potential? Start saving and get a 144hz monitor. There you go!A friend told you about overclocking and you're very excited. You boost up some clocks and boom! It crashes! Do yourself a favor and get a new PSU.So you see.. You can always carry on with your rig just by brushing and polishing the bits gathering rust (of course not literally!)Hope this helps. Happy building!Edit: Sorry, I misread your question. It was a ‘what’ I read as ‘why’ in a hurry. Anyways, this may be helpful too.
Need help to choose computer power supply PSU.?
For a system with a GTX 550 Ti you need at least a 400W power supply, so 500-520 watts is recommended for ample breathing room. Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, Silverstone, OCZ, Enermax and XFX are excellent brands. Corsair's "Builder Series" PSUs are popular budget choices (lower-quality than their TX and HX models) but still above average. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...
How do you choose the right PSU?
All power supplies (PSUs) for computers have a power output, in watts… 600W, 800W, 1000W etc. My experience with them is limited to just one, a 600W power supply. When you buy them they’ll have the power output right on the box, along with a list of all the usable power connectors. I had to upgrade my 350W PSU to this one because of a new video card (an EN7950GT) that needed more power, ie, it needed a separate power feed from the PSU that the motherboard didn’t provide. It seems pretty obvious to know when you need a better PSU: 1) You don’t have the power connector that will make the video card run 2) It says right on the box of the video card that it requires a PSU of a certain power. No brainer right? Of all the video cards I’ve seen, the power requirements are given with just 2 pieces of information: 1) The card requires a PSU of ‘at least’ this much power, for example “minimum 450W PSU”… something like that 2) The card requires specific power connectors, they have different names, theres 4-pin and 6-pin versions. They look like this: http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/pcie6index.jpg Anyway, they don’t say exactly how much power they use. Suppose you want a setup with 2 high-end video cards that both indicate that they need a minimum 600-W PSU. Would a 600W PSU therefore be enough, to run both cards? The video cards don’t say exactly how much power they’ll use, nor do they recommend what PSU you should use if you’ve got more than one. Is the “minimum ### W PSU” then just a “safe suggestion”? What about the power requirements of everything else: the hard drives, the motherboard, the CPU? Should the experienced computer builder know the power requirements of everything running so that they know their PSU will be able to provide enough? Finally, if I’m overestimating the issue here, then can I assume that, if the PSU has the right connectors, then it has enough power? For example, my 600W PSU has 6 SATA hard drive power feeds and 6 PCI-E 6-pin power feeds, does that mean I can run 6 video cards and 6 hard drives at once?
Think about your question critically for a moment.None of us know what your tolerance for performance is, the resolution you play games at, what games you play, or any other details.As such the 970 might be borderline too slow right now, or it could offer you fantastic performance for years to come.And the only person in the world that can tell you when your video card is too slow is yourself.
When upgrading your system, you should always look into what is the “bottleneck” of the system. You should check if you have any of these:Having a HDD as a boot drive. If so, go get yourself a SSD it really helps slash boot times for your system. You can find many good SSDs for cheap everywhere, but keep in mind never to buy used ones, as these already have an unknown number of read-write cycles, which may cause them to fail faster.If you’re having a low fps count when playing games, you should:Upgrade your CPU. Even in the age of 6 core 12 thread consumer CPUs, many games still use only 1–2 threads to run, so if your CPU is old (check by going to device manager), you should get a new one. Keep in mind, if you do decide to get a new CPU, you probably have to get a new motherboard as well, as different generations of CPUs use different sockets on the motherboard. Check the compatibility of your CPU and motherboard before you buy.Upgrade your graphics card. If you’ve got a decent CPU and you’re still getting low frame rates, you should upgrade your graphics card. If you want to, you can Google different benchmarks for a graphics card and get one that suits your needs.You can also get a RAM upgrade, especially if you have less then 8gb of it. Keep in mind which version of RAM your motherboard supports and how many slots there are. Fairly recent motherboards support DDR4, but some might only support DDR3. A good way to find out is to Google your motherboard’s model number. When buying, keep in mind how many sticks of RAM a kit has, as not every kit is the same. Some 16gb kits may have 2 sticks of 8gb, or 2x8, or 4 sticks of 4gb, or 4x4. These AxB numbers denote the number of sticks there are in a kit. It is not recommended to mix different brands of RAM, as it might cause problems.If you have one or more of these in your system, you can upgrade those. Have fun upgrading!This helps you decide on what you can put into your system: partpicker.com
Amazon.com: EVGA 500 W1, 80+ WHITE 500W, 3 Year Warranty, Power Supply 100-W1-0500-KR: Computers & AccessoriesThat will fix you right up.
Have you taken a look at PSU Finder and this one Cooler Master Power Supply Calculator ?Basically, you need to provide all the info to the estimator which provides a decent list. At the end, I would take up 1 level above my requirement and also look out for preferably a modular one.