Should I Upgrade PSU After Fitting Seperate Graphics Card?

A knowledgeable friend recently diagnosed that the problems with my old Acer M3910 desktop were caused by the onboard/intergrated GPU. He fitted a seperate Geforce 210 graphics card into the apropriate slot. Everything now works fine.

Today, just out of curiosity, I was watching a video about installing new mother boards and CPUs in old PCs. In the video he mentioned that if you change from intergrated to seperate GPU you should upgrade the power supply to one with a higher output.

As everything is running perfectly, do I need to change the 250W unit that's fitted at present? I don't use the pc for gaming, just browsing, watching videos, etc. Thanks for any advice.

MisterEd said:

Nvidia states that the Geforce 210 requires a 300W power supply. However, if you're not pushing the graphics card by playing games then your current 250W unit should be enough.

Thanks for help, MisterEd. I'll leave it as it is for now, and if the PSU ever needs replacing I'll get a higher output unit.

woodbine said:

Thanks for help, MisterEd. I'll leave it as it is for now, and if the PSU ever needs replacing I'll get a higher output unit.

Well if you are using any device in your machine. Despite the low-power-usage, any "rise" in power-usage could possibly cause it to shut-off, including monitoring apps and programs. Even just leaving your computer idling, something could tap into it's processing power ( etc instance ) just enough to cause it to go off. This could possibly cause damage to the machine.

I would at least have 500Watts installed and 200Watts available for all other systems usage. Even a 900W or 1600W is affordable nowadays. Because any rise and usage of that GPU could cause the computer to go down. Think about it.

250WPSU - 300W GPU - other-chipset-functions-board-devices = your computer not having enough. Like a car with no gas

I understand that we want to stay within our limitations but sometimes the juice spikes up and I can not take that chance. Same if I was to upgrade my labtop to a more powerful processor, asides for the possibility of increased heat I would have to consider the labtop has limitations.

Recently I discover that "There are GPUs built with external liquid cooling systems" why not "use it externally in my labtop externally" then when I want to go mobile I could unhook the GPU.

Running tests with Voltage meter ( I forget the name ) you could see that even if your PSU is 1600w it is only pulling 100w out of it, but then out to nowhere that could turn up to 200w or even 600w. Then their is the possibility I might want to over-clock ( which Nvidia seems to be against lately ) and thus draw more power. Without even thinking about other devices I might end up with something going higher then 600w.

It is just my opinion that if you could get more juice for less money with high quality then why not?

"A 900W or 1600W power supply is a big overkill for a computer that doesn't need it. A power supply is more efficient when it matches what the computer needs. If you buy one too large then it will actually run inefficiently and use more power than one that is matched to the computer."

That is not true as almost any test on PSUs will show they have maximum efficiency at approx half their rated power. It is quite a broad curve but efficiency does drop off a bit at the lower power end and close to max rated power.

So from an efficiency point of view a PSU of approx double the expected power consumption is actually a good choice. Ignoring the cost consideration.
That also gives a margin if extra is required.

A quality PSU is always worth it over a cheap one whatever the claimed wattage.

There is no point buying a PSU that is double the required power needs of the computer, you are just burning money at that point, it is good to over allocate so if you think you need a 600w PSU get a 650w or if you can get substantially more Wattage than that for similar price then go for that option.

Efficiency rating is what matters because the computer will only draw the power it needs to for the load that it is generating. A 600W PSU is not going to output 600W constantly.

The math is load by Efficiency over supplied Voltage AC to DC Where the conversion is lost to heat.

so a 80 plus gold is going to run at around 90% efficiency at 50% load on the computer so 90% would mean that the other 10% is lost to heat in the conversion to DC from AC. The max rated Wattage of the power supply would be really efficient if you are at or above 50%. It not going to hurt anything going over the requirement.

it just means if you buy a 1000W PSU for a computer that is only going to need like 300w then its not very efficient and wasting money.

I think unless the computer displays issues that would suggest power then the PSU should be OK. Its a pretty low spec card that would not require a power connector and runs off of PCI power. The rating on most PSU is over allocated as well so you can usually run over that stamped watts on the side of the PSU and for sustained period.

Efficiency is in the cents anyway so its small margin and not really something to be overly concerned about.