Take a chance on 300W Supply ?

[Oldskool]

Frig.

My Soyo KT600 motherboard arrived today, along with an Ultra 300W power supply.

I've been reading the mobo manual, and it suggests a 350W power supply.

Whaddya think? Take a chance, or get a new one..........?

[NoOne=NBA=]

I'd get a new one.
With power supply failure being the problem that it is in most electronics, and the bad things that can happen in a chain reaction when the power supply does fail, I don't see any reason to take the risk.
A side benefit of using the 350 is that it should run a bit cooler too.

[maraxle]

You'll be fine with a 300.  The motherboard doesn't draw nearly that much power unless you have 15 USB devices hanging off of it.

[Nailz]

I agree with maraxle, depends on what you are using the system for, if it's for Mame with a vid card and a cd-rom, 300 W is fine.  If it's a gaming rig with a Radeon and multiple drives and dvd's, you'll want more.

[pointdablame]

While I agree that 300w would be sufficient, it depends on QUALITY OF POWER. Let me say that again.... QUALITY OF POWER.

Is "ultra" the brand name? For my money, an Antec or Enermax PSU is like security in itself. I've also heard good things about Sparkle and Vantec PSU's.  If this is a no-name brand, get a new one.  I've personally had and seen components die because some crappy PSU had voltage spikes/drops on the rails.

Get a quality PSU.

[Oldskool]

Ultra appears to be a brand name.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=599464&Sku=U10-9300%20B

[maraxle]

While I agree that 300w would be sufficient, it depends on QUALITY OF POWER. Let me say that again.... QUALITY OF POWER.

Garbage in, garbage out.  It doesn't matter how good your power supply is if you don't have it on a clean source of power, like a UPS.  Even most generic power supplies will be fine if you give them nice, clean power to work with.

[Santoro]

I'll go against the grain here.  I have used many el cheapo PS's in the past with no problem, though for my main desktop I usually get a slightly better one just in case.

FWIW.

[pmc]

I like to use outboard powered USB hubs when using smaller power supplies. And don't go too nuts adding hard drives, CDROMs, DVD, PCI cards and all that.

Anyone know an easy way to measure power usage so you know when it's time to upgrade? I have a couple of boxes (one is in my cabinet) that seem fine, but I don't really know how hard I'm pushing them.

[maraxle]

My mini-itx board has a 55 watt power supply.  Yup, you read that right.  55 watts.  It has a 7200 rpm hard drive, an nVidia GeForce 4 card, a USB remote control, and a USB Playstation2 controller adapter (with 2 controllers attached), and runs fine.  Even though that motherboard will suck up a lot more power than the mini-itx, you should be able to run 2 hard drives, a cd/dvd-rom/rw drive, a handful of USB devices, and a couple of extra PCI cards without even taxing that 300 watt power supply.

[Lilwolf]

AMD's DO require more juice then intels.

you can't go wrong highter...but you can the other way around.

but a 300 will do fine... until you add a bunch of extra hardware / video cards which take extra connections... but you will be pushing it.

[DaveMMR]

Anyone know an easy way to measure power usage so you know when it's time to upgrade? I have a couple of boxes (one is in my cabinet) that seem fine, but I don't really know how hard I'm pushing them.

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/  Use that to help you determine what kind of power supply you need.  It seems to be pretty reliable, though I can't guarantee anything.  

Oh, and sorry I haven't posted for a while.  The cab had to be put back burner for some time, but perhaps now I'll be able to finally get to it.