Zalman 400 watt enough for 7800GTX

falcon26 · Post by **falcon26** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:21 am

I was wondering if the Zalman 400 watt PSU was enough to run a 7800 gtx video card? Its the A version not the new zalman 400 watt one.

Thanks, falcon26

teknerd · Post by **teknerd** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:25 am

It depends on what else you have in your setup.
for instance, it will probably be fine if you have a venice core athlon and a single 7200RPM hard drive. It probaby wont be fine if you have a dual core pentium with 2 raptors in RAID and another hard drive for storage.

It also depends on what the amperage of each rail is. Find out how much each of your components pulls on the 12V rail. If the sum of them is greater than the amount your psu can provide on the 12V rail, you need a new psu. otherwise you're fine (although you should add about 20% for overhead).

falcon26 · Post by **falcon26** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:32 am

Ops forgot here are my system specs:

AMD64 4000 San Deigo
2 gigs Corsair XMS Pc3200 Ram
120 Gig Samsung 8mb cache 7200 rpm HD
Abit AN8 Ultra2 Liteon Dvd/cdrw burners
Audigy 2 ZS sound card
Zalman 400 Watt Power Supply
BFG 7800 GTX

So how about now..............

Falcon26

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:38 pm

I would not recommend running a reasonable ATX v1.3 PSU on your setup. They're usually weak on 12V power. The Zalman is no exception.

teknerd · Post by **teknerd** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 9:09 pm

sthayashi wrote:I would not recommend running a reasonable ATX v1.3 PSU on your setup. They're usually weak on 12V power. The Zalman is no exception.

agreed. Upgrade to one of the new seasonics

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 9:24 pm

er.
I dont see his processor demanding a lot of current. it needs less than clawhammers.

plus he/she could undervolt a couple of notches with a san diego/venice core making it very low in power requirements.

I wish i knew how much current a mainboard needs. I havent seen a computer have a problem with this ever using mediocre psu's.

still I would agree and say do the seasonic 12 series, its such a great company, unless you own the zalman already. then screw it.

I wish we had a list of psu's recommended for their current and voltage stability and such. (and which types of systems needed them or didnt)