10-09-2018, 08:50 AM
I was watching the excellent Britec video about 'turn your low end PC into a gaming PC' and have the following info which might help anyone considering upgrading
Last year I upgraded my Acer Aspire desktop. I added 4G of RAM, added 2 usb-3.0 ports and a new graphics card (both using PCI) I also changed the drive to SSD and upgraded the processor
I calculated the net result of all of this to be around 20W extra and was wondering if I needed to change the PSU (rated at 220W max). I eneded up not doing so as I reasoned that a desktop manufacturer would need to provide extra capacity in their existing PSU, since they are offering all these empty PCI slots for expansion.
As a check I had one of these devices that plug into 240V mains and display the watts. With all the new gear the desktop seemed to consume around 110W
So it looks as though the spare capacity offered by the PSU is such that under normal conditions this computer was using only half the available power. So in this case the extra 20W caused by the upgrade was easily managable, with no need to change the PSU as well.
Hope this info will help people, or if anyone has similar tales regarding the PSU and upgrades, since it is the only part of a PC upgrade that is a bit of a grey area.
Last year I upgraded my Acer Aspire desktop. I added 4G of RAM, added 2 usb-3.0 ports and a new graphics card (both using PCI) I also changed the drive to SSD and upgraded the processor
I calculated the net result of all of this to be around 20W extra and was wondering if I needed to change the PSU (rated at 220W max). I eneded up not doing so as I reasoned that a desktop manufacturer would need to provide extra capacity in their existing PSU, since they are offering all these empty PCI slots for expansion.
As a check I had one of these devices that plug into 240V mains and display the watts. With all the new gear the desktop seemed to consume around 110W
So it looks as though the spare capacity offered by the PSU is such that under normal conditions this computer was using only half the available power. So in this case the extra 20W caused by the upgrade was easily managable, with no need to change the PSU as well.
Hope this info will help people, or if anyone has similar tales regarding the PSU and upgrades, since it is the only part of a PC upgrade that is a bit of a grey area.