Building a computer

[a-4-year-old]

When building a computer, how much wattage is enough? I certainly don't want to pay for extra. how am I supposed to know how much I need.

Also how many fans are enough? I am a bit paranoid about heat issues..

Assuming I buy my parts off of newegg, the greatest place on the interwebs.

[Amblin]

You're going to need to be a lot more specific.

First of all, a power supply with a higher watt rating than you need will NOT draw more power than a power supply with a watt rating that is closer to your computer's need. The only difference might be the price you paid for the power supply.

Just use a calculator like this one http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp or post your specs here.

Cooling needs depend on what you're cooling, whether you want to overclock, make it quiet?

[a-4-year-old]

The whole thing is entirely hypothetical.

[Amblin]

Well, then, HYPOTHETICALY speaking, you buy a power supply that corresponds to your needs.

????????

[FliesLikeABrick]

Some points:
- Don't buy the cheapest parts you can, especially when it comes to the motherboard, power supply and others.  The PSU is especially important because a cheap PSU can damage other parts of your system
- Don't guess.  If you're not sure what you're doing or have a question about something, ask someone.  Don't waste your time and money by buying cheap parts or components that aren't compatible with each other.


Tell us more.  Tell us how much you can spend, what you plan on using the computer for.  Tell us what games you plan to play, if any, and what kind of performance you expect.  What OS do you plan on running?  If you plan on running Vista, be prepared to buy more RAM, a faster processor, and better video card (just to get the same performance you would in XP).

There are a large number of people here who can help you out quite a bit, but you need to give us a lot more information first

[blackdevil0742]

If you go for the 8800gts or similar then you'll need 500watt minimum or that's what most ppl say on the Crysis forum.

If you get vista then do not listen to flies. You won't need faster processor or GPU to match XP's performance. Though the thing you will need more of compared to xp is the RAM. Vista needs 512-1024 more RAM to run as xp.

[FliesLikeABrick]

If you go for the 8800gts or similar then you'll need 500watt minimum or that's what most ppl say on the Crysis forum.

If you get vista then do not listen to flies. You won't need faster processor or GPU to match XP's performance. Though the thing you will need more of compared to xp is the RAM. Vista needs 512-1024 more RAM to run as xp.

blackdevil, a number of the latest games specifically have higher CPU, RAM and GPU requirements if you are running Vista.

[blackdevil0742]

The only requirement i've seen that's allways higher on vista is the RAM. I think that i've seen a higher CPU need on one game but never any better GPU. If there have been  like this then it must've been just after vistas release. The drivers for GPU's have improved so you only loose max 4% performance compared to XP. Though This is of course not the case with older games that are not optimized for vista.

[Brock]

If you want something really crazy like an 8800 or HD2900, then 700-800W is preferable

I have a Radeon X1900GT and it runs very well on 650W.  Although I was running it with 300W before

[FliesLikeABrick]

The only requirement i've seen that's allways higher on vista is the RAM. I think that i've seen a higher CPU need on one game but never any better GPU. If there have been  like this then it must've been just after vistas release. The drivers for GPU's have improved so you only loose max 4% performance compared to XP. Though This is of course not the case with older games that are not optimized for vista.

Sounds like you use Vista and you're upset about it.  True or false?

[blackdevil0742]

haha. Yeah I use vista
I'm somewhat ok with it. Gamingwise it's good and I haven't noticed any performance issues in new games. But when it comes to some older(16bit) applications or games I can't get them to work or they get crazy sometimes so I'm getting a new HDD to intall XP on it. It's an ok OS and it does have its pros but there  farmore cons ATM.

The only reason I have vista is that some games are made exclusive for it...which really sucks. So i'm not defending the OS in anyway with my comments. I just want to give you the updated facts how it is.

[FliesLikeABrick]

Aha, so you are one of the unfortunate gamers who bought Vista for the "you need vista for these games" games.  I'm sorry to hear that MS has you by the balls

[Clawbug]

Aha, so you are one of the unfortunate gamers who bought Vista for the "you need vista for these games" games.  I'm sorry to hear that MS has you by the balls

I knew this was going to happen!

To the topic, as Amblin said, the only thing you want to know about your PSU wattage is that the PSU wattage is some 20% higher tahn the wattage required by the hardware. Meaning that if you have hardware which draws 250W at the worst case, you would need mimimum of 300W PSU. However, even if you buy some 1200W PSU, your computer won't draw more than that 250W from the wall (Doesn't include the (in)efficiency of the PSU).

What I hate the most, is people like in the Crysis forum(according to Blackdevil) who say that "YOU GONNA NEED AT LEST 750 VATTS PSU CUZ 8800GT/GTS IS SO FAST!1". If I replace my 7300GT with 8800GT/GTS/GTX/Ultra, I can still play everything with this 350W Codegen PSU (And yes, Codegen isn't good. Codegen is one of those manufacturers you DON'T want to use. Avoud Codegen as much as you can, please!).

Sure system can draw that 500W, if it has overclocked(and especially if the parts are overvolted.) CPU and GPU + RAM/VRAM, but in those cases no one would go ask about PSU's, and that hardware would erquire alot better cooling than the stock coolers. (water, dry ice, ln²) Those who do more than slight overclocking, know about hardware enough that they don't really need any advice.