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I went to two online PSU calculator, and the results are very different. On extreme power supply claculator, the result is 290 W.

On the Newegg Power Supply Calculator, the same configuration gives a result of 500 W.

Do you know other Power Supply Calculator? How do you know how reliable they are?

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Your bonus question should be made into a separate question if you want to ask it. – TheTXI Aug 3 '09 at 16:21
Whaou, quite a strict editing policy ! You are right, but you could have asked me to edit my post. – user4444 Aug 3 '09 at 17:09
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@shodanex that is not how superuser (and other stackexchange sites) work. If you read the FAQ: "Like Wikipedia, this site is collaboratively edited. If you are not comfortable with the idea of your questions and answers being edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you." – TM. Aug 3 '09 at 19:32
As I said, I think it was the right thing to do. But on stackoverflow, editing is not so prompt. – user4444 Aug 4 '09 at 7:50
I liked the outervision calculation system, it gave me the answer I was looking for so that helped me believe it... – Nick Josevski Oct 1 '09 at 6:39
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4 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

see

How much will a 300w power supply run?

Answer: a lot! The quality of the power supply is often more important than having an umpteen-bazillion-jigawatts number stamped on the side.

And unless you're a hardcore gamer with two super high end video cards in SLI, it's doubtful you need 500w+.

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Thank you, this is very informative, I will stick to my 46O Watt PSU then. – user4444 Aug 3 '09 at 18:09
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up vote 5 down vote

All power supply calculators are going to be estimates, at best. The only way to determine this reliably is to add up the amperage spec for each component you'll have on each rail and make sure it's under the PSU's specified max for that rail. Newegg lists these specs under "Output."

Which reminds me, the "total wattage" number can be misleading to describe a PSU's capacity. Depending on how this wattage is divided over the PSU's different "rails," you still might overload a rail without going over the total wattage.

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+1 different rails, these days this is quite a big issue unless investing in a "one big rail" psu for high-power-draw systems ^^ – Oskar Duveborn Feb 21 '10 at 17:00
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up vote 2 down vote

These power supply calculators are only as good as the data which populates them. It is very difficult to get an actual power draw rating unless you have a multi-meter placed inline. I would recommend going for too much power versus not enough.

500w PSU is usually sufficient for most applications.

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up vote 1 down vote

Without looking, it feels like the 290W is the actual power draw result (for anything with a modern gaming GPU in it anyway), and the 500W suggestion is what it at least should say on the PSU to run those 290W if you pick any random-quality PSU out there... just a theory.

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