Guide for Selecting a Power Supply

[GGTexas]

I've been reading the postings here as well as your replies.  SInce you seem knowledgeable re: power supplies let me ask you one quick general question.  I will be purchasing an HP p6347c factory refurbished tower only.  It comes with a standard 300W PSU.  In general, I should be able to replace this with any good quality 450-500W PSU to accommodate a better graphics card, correct?  There should be no motherboard issues as far as compatibility?  It ships with an AMD Foxconn H-RS780-uATX motherboard.  Just want to make sure I can easily upgrade the PSU.  Many thanks.

[Big_Dave]

GGTexas,

The standard ATX power supply should fit.  You can see what to look for in my above post. Refurbished means that PC was returned for some reason.  Sometimes HP will do some hard wired piggy back connections on a standard cable. You might need an adapter or two depending on the internal wiring to get some of the minor front panel devices working.

Look over the p6347c motherboard so you know what connections are needed (4 pin ATX, 24 pin, etc..)

[Greek2me]

My son has a year old p6150t and wanted to upgrade the video card to an ATI/Radeon HD5750.  This required an upgraded power supply.  He chose a Corsair TX750W.  We installed the card and the power supply and now the machine will not turn on.  When you press the button the fans spin a revolution or two and that is it.  A question has been raised as to wether or not the monther board is compatible with ATX 2.01 or higher.     Any ideas?

Thank you.

[Big_Dave]

Greek2me,

Did you try powering up the PC without the new graphics card installed?  Corsair is one of the better made power supplies.

[trustin356]

I purchased and installed a new power supply/fan several months ago and the fan is quite noisy.  Is there a way to adjust the fan so the noise isn't so bad??

[Big_Dave]

Trustin356,

What model HP PC are you using?  You might need a bios update or some bios have a fan speed function.

[rdopso]

I ran my system through the power calculator that someone posted; and for the system below the calculator estimator indicated max power use of 530 W.

HP Pavilion Elite HPE 180t

Intel quad-core 2.8Mhz i7 CPU

12 G of RAM

2 internal 1T WD Caviar Black HDDs and one external 1T Caviar black HDD

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 graphics card with 1 G of memory

2 optical drives and a few USB peripherals

mother board sound and networking are used

computer is mainly used for photo and video editing

I very recently replaced the OE 430 W power supply in my computer above with a Corsair TX650W unit to handle my current and likely future system upgrades.  The 650W Corsair PSU is the same size as the OE PSU and uses the same attaching points (printed info on the Corsair box stated the TX650W was a fair bit larger than the HP OE unit, but that was an error -- however, the 750W Corsair PSU is larger and may not fit the HP case).  The Corsair 650W unit dropped right in with no problem.  The Corsair appears to be a very high quality unit and is actually quieter than the already quiet 430W OE PSU, and the only minor downside to the installation was all the extra unneeded power wires attached to the Corsair PSU which must be tucked into the smallish HP case -- but they do all fit with no real problem.  The Corsair 650W PSU may be a bit of overkill for my current computer system, but I wanted the extra headroom to accomodate future expansion of my system.

[Kantucki]

You can't get a better built power supply for an upgrade than a Corsair IMO . Even the packaging is high quality.

[rdopso]

Yes, I had to LOL when I opened the box and found the PSU enclosed in a black cloth bag with a pull string -- now that is high quality packaging for a power supply.

[Ricax]

hey guys,

I was reading through the older posts and I'm hoping someone can help me.  I have an hp d5000z with an AMD Phenom 9750 quad core at 2.4GHz, 3GB of RAM, and a 1GB nVidia 9800GT video card.  Last week, the video card stopped working and i replaced it with the PNY version of the same card.

My question is, do I have to replace the power supply? After reading some of the posts of potential mis-labeling of the power supplies, I'm worried I'll damage my PC in some way.  I'm running nVidia's system monitor program and when my PC is idling, the temperature is around 48 deg C. When playing Starcraft 2, it tops out around 62 deg C.

Should I be worried or is my PC okay?