Dell w/ NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 & 350w???

Hmm interesting, well Nvidia overshoots that estimate just so you're safe, but that 350w psu has to be pretty damn efficient to power that, or that reviewer had a typo
 
Well dell does underrate their psu's. And Nvidia does overstate what you need since they don't know how much other stuff you have in your case. I'm sure if you added everything up on a psu calc it would be close.
 
If it's not a typo,I'd say it's underpowered.Be cutting it awfully close if you threw some demanding game like Crysis at it.
 
Working in electronics retail as a systems sales guy, I see this kind of thing all the time, from almost all vendors aside from Alienware. You open the box up and see all the gear they cram in there, and then you see that the PSU is ridiculously low powered for such a configuration. We had a Dell with an i7-920, 1TB drive, and a Radeon HD4650, all running off a 375W PSU.

Gateway, on the other hand, had a system with a GTX 280, i7-950, and 9GB DDR3 running on a 750W PSU. That was the FX series, though.
 
Why would someone pay for a i7920 and put a 4650 in there is beyond any explanation.
 
Is there a power difference between a 192 and 216 core GTX (damn, I'll stop being lazy and look that up)

but I'm putting a rig together for the ladyfriend with my spare parts. IP35-E, e6300, and right now its an x700 pro but I'm trying to see if I can get away with a 260. I can cut it down to 1 HD and no other add in cards if necessary but it's an antec smartpower 350...not the heartiest of beasts.
 
vsboxerboy said:
Is there a power difference between a 192 and 216 core GTX (damn, I'll stop being lazy and look that up)

but I'm putting a rig together for the ladyfriend with my spare parts. IP35-E, e6300, and right now its an x700 pro but I'm trying to see if I can get away with a 260. I can cut it down to 1 HD and no other add in cards if necessary but it's an antec smartpower 350...not the heartiest of beasts.
Click to expand...

Really no power difference. I wouldn't recommend the GTX 260 off that Smartpower since:

The Truepower I and II series as well as the Smartpower series were well known for their above average death rates due to a poor choice in caps and cooling design. In more specific terms, Antec/CWT specified/used caps (Fuhjyyu caps) that did not respond well to heat. Unfortunately, Antec made the decision to have the PSU fan only ramp at really high temps in an effort to keep the PSU quiet. However, just medium to high temps were enough to screw up the caps so really high temps were murderous. Over time, this degraded the quality and performance of those PSU series.

So I recommend replacing the PSU, especially if you hear a squeal, whine, or any odd noise coming from the PSU. Those are usually the first signs of those particular PSU lines dying. So if you do hear a squeal, whine, or any odd noise, that's enough grounds to replace the PSU.
 
yeah, that's what I had figured. Well, at this point since the case is a little beat I might as well wait for a combo and just go the whole way, save the HTPC case and small power supply for an HTPC later once I can get rid of some of the scratches and poorly cut holes in the case...

Thanks!
 
I had a smartpower 2 with leaking caps, antec replaced it with a truepower 3.0. I would suggest a seasonic psu, they are pretty good, got one in my new pc now.
 
I went with an 9800GT for now. Got one off a forum member for $55 shipped, not bad. I don't want to spend the money to upgrade the PSU at the moment. When I upgrade my rig, I'll pass my old PSU and GPU onto the gf machine. But for now, this seemed to be the better option.

I think the 350w will keep up, don't think the 9800GT will be too much for it, and the CPU is pretty light as well. But yeah, PSUs are weird. With all the re-branding it's hard to keep track of what is quality and what isn't
 
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