Mini PC power supplies

Optik

New member
Advice please (and apologies if this topic has been covered before - I couldn't find it). New mini-pc working fine, case has 450W power supply. The spec sheet warned that the consumption would be 315W and to "consider upgrading the power supply". None of the cases had a higher wattage. Can I / should I replace the power supply with a higher rating (say 600W), or more to the point is this necessary? Current build does not seem to be running hot and certainly is not giving problems
 

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
Well that seems a little strange, is this a sheet that came with your PC?

I think it's a glitch somewhere slong the line to be honest, if thats following the same logic that the PCS configurator normal uses then that figure of 315w will have a 20% margin added to you theoretical maximum to give you a bit breating space from that. So that means your PC would work fine on a 350w supply, let alone a 450w supply!

You would have probably gotten a call from PCS if their was any issue with the build you had chosen when they came to build it.

If you post the processor type, GPU type, how much RAM you have and what HDD you have i will give you a rough idea of the power needed to run it, however you would need an i7 2600, 8GB of RAM a caviar black and a GTX 560ti to get near 450w.

I suspect you have something like an i3 - a low end GPU to give you a power consumption of 315w though.
 

Optik

New member
Thanks for your reply. Info - not a sheet - its on the order page on the website in my account. Spec - i7 2600; GTX 560Ti; 1 TB drive (not caviar - the default option); 16GB Samsung RAM - which did make we wonder where the 315 W came from as I would have thought it would be higher. What I don't want of course is the PS to fall of its perch and take the machine with it.
 

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
Well it would be higher than the stated 315w with that hardware, by my calculations the maximum it should be able to draw (roughly) is about 400w probably slightly less. That gives you a 12% margin to play with, the PCS configurator builds in a 20% margin but i think because it's a mini PC and they don't have antthing with a bigger PSU it has let you select that spec to build.

I wouldn't worry about it, the figure of 400w is every component in the PC on absolute maximum load. To make that happen you would have to be multi tasking to the max. More often than not you will be running well under the absolute maximum potential power draw of the system and ontop of that you have an extra 50w or so to call on should you need it.
 
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