250 watt PSU

Md z · April 17, 2021

Budget (including currency)200$ (16,958)

Country: Bangladesh

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Normal low end online Gaming, typing & photo editing

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): My GPU is dead and my motherboard is very old so i want to build a low end PC . I want Build with AMD Althon 3000G

(4*2) 8 GB 2400 Mhz DDR4 Ram

Asrock 320A motherboard

1 TB HDD . The question is I have 250 Watt PSU . My budget is low so buying a 300 watt or 500 watt PSU is very hard for me. Can i use my 250 PSU with it ?

will it damage my motherboard?

FRD · April 17, 2021

If you use a AMD Athlon 3000G then 250W should be working.

I think your total build realistically only uses 150-200W of power maximum. Just if you upgrade or add a gpu, then 250W is not fine anymore. Only then you would also need to upgrade to a better quality psu.

mariushm · April 17, 2021

From a wattage point of view the power supply will be fine.

From a quality point of view, it's debatable.

Also, modern processors have different... "patterns", or "behaviors" about how they consume power ... they can suddenly turn all cores to maximum frequency and consume 30-50 watts and then a few milliseconds later they can turn off cores to save power, making power drop down to 5-10w or so very quickly ... older power supplies don't always handle these sudden fluctuations of power well, so the 250 watts power supply - if it can't handle this wall - may cause the pc to reset or shut down suddenly from time to time.

If this is the case with your power supply, it's unlikely it would cause any damage to the computer, so you can just go ahead and use the power supply and see how your computer will work. A 300w power supply, if it's as old as the 250w power supply, won't make a difference... but most 400+ bronze efficiency or better power supplies should be modern enough to not cause issues.

The 3000g processor consumes maybe up to 40-50 watts. The motherboard... maybe 10 watts for the chipset, onboard audio, network etc, ram maybe 5 watts, the hard drive around 8-10 watts.

So your whole computer won't consume more than 100 watts, as long as that 250 watts psu can produce more than 100 watts on the 12v output (should be written on its label) it would be capable of powering the computer.

Md z · April 18, 2021

21 hours ago, mariushm said:

From a wattage point of view the power supply will be fine.

From a quality point of view, it's debatable.

Also, modern processors have different... "patterns", or "behaviors" about how they consume power ... they can suddenly turn all cores to maximum frequency and consume 30-50 watts and then a few milliseconds later they can turn off cores to save power, making power drop down to 5-10w or so very quickly ... older power supplies don't always handle these sudden fluctuations of power well, so the 250 watts power supply - if it can't handle this wall - may cause the pc to reset or shut down suddenly from time to time.

If this is the case with your power supply, it's unlikely it would cause any damage to the computer, so you can just go ahead and use the power supply and see how your computer will work. A 300w power supply, if it's as old as the 250w power supply, won't make a difference... but most 400+ bronze efficiency or better power supplies should be modern enough to not cause issues.

The 3000g processor consumes maybe up to 40-50 watts. The motherboard... maybe 10 watts for the chipset, onboard audio, network etc, ram maybe 5 watts, the hard drive around 8-10 watts.

So your whole computer won't consume more than 100 watts, as long as that 250 watts psu can produce more than 100 watts on the 12v output (should be written on its label) it would be capable of powering the computer.