Video Card for 300 Watt Power Supply?

I don't have any good VC suggestions, but if your limitations involve your expertise to change a PSU you should still consider that option. PSUs are pretty simple to change and there is plenty of step by step instructionals online to help you.

There's really no lazy "out" here. If you're willing to invest in a decent midrange GPU you'll need a good PSU. A 300-400W won't be that expensive, given everyone is looking at 500-700 (or more) these days.

You get what you pay for though. Wattage is not the way to select good PSU's, stability and features is (myself, I like modular cabling). A good guide:

PSU 101

It's really not that hairy to replace it - just write down all the connectors and their orientation before removing them, google a basic tutorial on the web, or chat up someone local who can replace it. Just make sure whatever PSU you buy fits the HP's form factor; maybe the HP website has upgrade suggestions.

My advice would be to check out some vidio card manufacturers websites and see what kind of compatability options they have.

I suspect HP may use a proprietary power supply. Don't know.
How can I found out?

I have an HP, and it uses a standard ATX power supply.
Which I replaced with a Thermaltake 460W when I replaced the video card.

I later found a website selling replacement HP computers. They had mine listed and the replacement was an ATX. Now I need someone to do it. I know it is not hard but that and motherboards are only things I haven't done.

But I am still looking for a 300 watt upgrade video card. I ain't playing doom and I don't need anything that special.

Even my Nvidia 6800 GS requires a 350W, and it is far from a powerful card.

If you have experience with replacing other internal components you should not be afraid to do the power supply. It is very straight forward. The power connectors can not go on the wrong way, or on the wrong devices. They are keyed and unique.

It is only a matter of unplugging, removing the old one - which is only 4 screws - then putting in the new one and plugging things back in.

If you have replaced a hard drive or cdrom you should have the required skills.

You can probably get by with your 300 watt PS with a card requiring 350w. 7600gt is a good med-range card for a real good price which requires 350w. It running just fine with my 300W PS for now but I'm planning soon to replace it. In general the hotter the GPU runs the more watt it's demanding so if you find you are running games working the card hard then you really need to change your PS soon.

So the more intense the graphics processing the hotter the GPU will become, and thus the more power it needs? If my computer is underpowered will the GPU underpreform?

So the more intense the graphics processing the hotter the GPU will become, and thus the more power it needs?

In general, though heat is actually a function of power consumption (which varies from card to card, but generally scales with workload) rather than the other way around.

If my computer is underpowered will the GPU underpreform?

More likely it would become unstable or simply not work.

I've been waiting for about three hours now and still no response from HP regarding my power supply rating on my Pavilion a1410n. Nothing at their website had the specs and I couldn't find them anywhere online that I searched. Does anyone happen to know or know of a link that I can check out to find out. Running a nvidia 7600GT.

Edit... just got an email. Said I was running at 300watts but assured me that this was enough to run my particular card. Not sure who to listen to so I guess I will be upgrading my psu on an otherwise 'almost new' system, ahem. Boy, did I mention how much I LOVE computers...

I've been waiting for about three hours now and still no response from HP regarding my power supply rating on my Pavilion a1410n.

There's no label on the PSU itself?

There's no label on the PSU itself? [2nd Lieutenant] [Drengin] [Over 5 Battles] [Chaotic Evil] [Crippling]

At work so it is kind of hard to astrally project myself back home... just kidding Kryo. You know I try to do all of this stuff from work and sometimes I don't have all of my info with me.

Guys, you're really going overboard on this. There is no way in hell that any graphics card requires anything near 300W. What you're looking at is actually the "recommended" total system power requirements with the card in question installed. All this will be dependent on processor, memory size, speed and number of hard drives and other peripherals. It also includes a significant amount of "headroom". This worry about a 500W PSU is what I like to call "Gothic" engineering where no one really knows what the requirements are so the beef up everything to the point of absurdity.

I did spend some time chasing it down a bit. The problem is that the graphics cards give this ambiguous system requirement but don't actually specify the requirements of the card itself.

For example a BFG GeForce 7950GT, which is a pretty high end card, "recommends" a 350W PSU with at least 22A of 12V, but if you use two 7950GT's they "recommend" a 500W PSU with at least 28A of 12V. The only information that's certain is that a single card won't draw more than 6A of 12V which is only 72W max. However, they don’t bother to spec the 5V load.

I have an HP Pavilion d4650y with a GeForce 7600GT, a 2.4 GHz e6600, 2GB of DDR2/600 ram and a 250GB, 10000RPM SATA2 drive. All of this is with a 300W power supply. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that 300W is totally sufficient for this setup. In fact the 300W is perfectly capable of running two GeForce 7600GT in SLI mode with everything else in my system the same. There is no reason to run out and buy a new PSU.

I have an HP Pavilion d4650y with a GeForce 7600GT, a 2.4 GHz e6600, 2GB of DDR2/600 ram and a 250GB, 10000RPM SATA2 drive. All of this is with a 300W power supply. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that 300W is totally sufficient for this setup. In fact the 300W is perfectly capable of running two GeForce 7600GT in SLI mode with everything else in my system the same. There is no reason to run out and buy a new PSU.

Really, the amperage is more important than the wattage, with the 12v rail(s) being the most important, since most of the components run on that. I'm not sure what the power specs are on a Core Duo, but an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 requires a bare minimum of 16A or so, and they can pull up to 20A under heavy load, and that's before you add in drives and video card. So a system-wide 28A requirement is not at all out of line for full load when you put a high end video card in the mix.

Cheap power supplies may list high wattage while having very poor amperage on the 12v rail. You'd also be better with a dual-12v supply , but IIRC on such models you should only take the combined 12v amperage at 2/3 or 3/4 value when figuring against your power needs.

If the amperage isn't there for the CPU and video card to pull, you'll know it--if it's a big enough difference from what it wants it won't even POST. It can get trickier if you have enough power to run it under light load, but not heavy load, as then you're into seemingly random crashes, shutdowns, and reboots, if not PSU (and subsequently component) damage.

I would recommend an ATI X1600XT. It is one of the better mid-range cards (I use one myself). It should work ok on your system. You mentioned that you don't have a computer supply near. Buy online. You might try Newegg.com. They have a good selection, excellent prices, and their customer service is second to none. They have a Sapphire X1600 listed for 90 bucks. You can also find a 400+ watt Thermaltake power supply for $40. What the above posters say is absolutely true re: changing it yourself. One of the easier things you can replace in your computer. Hope this has been of some help.

Really, the amperage is more important than the wattage, with the 12v rail(s) being the most important, since most of the components run on that. I'm not sure what the power specs are on a Core Duo, but an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 requires a bare minimum of 16A or so, and they can pull up to 20A under heavy load, and that's before you add in drives and video card. So a system-wide 28A requirement is not at all out of line for full load when you put a high end video card in the mix.

Yes of course the total amps required on each voltage rail is what is significant. However, the processor power is not pulled from the 12V supply, it's most likely pulled from the 3.3V rail or less likely the 5V supply. For all I know ATX PSU's now have a 2.5V supply as well. To truly understand the power supply requirements you need to add up all the current requirements for each individual power rail and make sure that all of these are satisfied. Actually it's a little more complicated than that because you need to account for the surge currents, but you get the idea.

I was just saying that there's no need to go borrowing trouble by going off and buying a new power supply before it's been demonstrated by some negative activity that you actually do need one. I was also giving my educated guess that the 300W supply that the OP and Evil have will be sufficient for their needs. After all, I do have a PhD in EE from MIT and have spent close to 8 years designing PC's and high end Unix workstations. Even though it has been 7~8 years since I've done so, I do have some basis in experience for my opinion.   

However, the processor power is not pulled from the 12V supply, it's most likely pulled from the 3.3V rail or less likely the 5V supply.

This used to be the case, but current-generation CPUs do generally run on a dedicated 12v line rather than the 3.3 off the ATX connector like they used to (largely since it's easier to handle the higher voltage/lower current line when it has to be regulated down to 1-2v anyway, AFAIK). The 3.3v and 5v lines are actually not used for many things any more--most components are centralizing on 12v, so it's even more important now than it used to be.

This used to be the case, but current-generation CPUs do generally run on a dedicated 12v line rather than the 3.3 off the ATX connector like they used to

You beat me to it. I just checked out an ASUS P5W mobo and that is indeed the case. They take the core cpu power off of the 2nd 12V rail. This is assumedly a dedicated 12V because you're very likely to modulate disc drive access noise and fan noise onto the cpu core power which would be a very bad thing. You also better have a very efficient DC-DC converter in front of the cpu otherwise you're generating very useless heat.

Even with all of that I'd still wait until something at least gave me the hint that I need a new PSU before I would bother changing it. After all the 300W PSU that came with my HP was specifically sized to support dual 7600GT's as well as dual 10,000RPM SATA drives although these do only take around an amp.   

HP has been known for not putting much of a PSU in their PC. I guess it's their way of cutting corners. IIRC My first Hp a few years ago had a weak 200w Psu.

Yeah, I would not assume that HP put in a powerful enough power supply to feed a SLI setup just because the mb is SLI capable.

And I don't agree that waiting for a problem before upgrading the ps to a recommended unit is a good idea.

That problem could very easily be a corrupted file write that would force a reinstall of the system.

Better safe than sorry, than safe after sorry.

My old system (Gateway) had a incredibly wimpy 160W PSU. Then when I upgraded to a 350W to support the Nvidia 6800AGP board, it generated enough heat to crash my computer whenever I loaded up a graphics-intensive game. ($30 more smackers for an Arctic Cooler ducted GPU heatsink).

As you can damage a GPU board with a wimpy PSU I'd invest in a decent one (that's 300W (at least)and quality amperage), m'self.

That is due to lousy card and/or case cooling, not the power supply, though.

And a 300W power supply running at 90% capacity will probably run hotter (and be much less reliable and have a much shorter lifespan) than a 540W running at 50%.

Just to add Mumblefratz... I went to HP and checked out your system specs. You at least got a 350w psu with your model, whereas mine is only 300w. It didn't specify anything with regards to the amperage however. Just to be safe I am going to upgrade my psu to around a 400w or so set up. I know about the amperage ratings and getting what you pay for so I believe I am pretty well informed to go and buy one. I appreciate the comments regarding this, but I would rather shell out 100.00 or so now and be safe than find out the hard way.

I would rather shell out 100.00 or so now and be safe than find out the hard way.

I gave a brief thought to doing a proper power supply analysis, but in the end laziness won out. Without a proper analysis everyone is simply guessing, but chasing down all the power requirements is truly a pain in the ass, particularly when the vendors themselves are so cavilier about providing any real information. This is why French catherderals have flying buttreses, because no one really understood what they're doing.