ATI Radeon HD 5770 and 375W Power Supply

Well, a friend of mine wound up telling me I should get a 500W power supply.  So now my question is, what brand would you suggest? 

It seems I've read that Dell has had issues with power supplies being compatible, but that it's been resolved since then.  Don't know if that's true or not, but if anyone could help, I'd like to see which PSUs work with Dell and won't break the bank. Thanks again for any help.

Hello

it just so happens that I have an ATI 5770 from Sapphire .... I've been using it fine in a old Dell 470.

I would have thought your 375 PSU was enough. One of the reasons I got the 5770 was because several reviews mentioned that it only drew about 120W or so on full.

Many of the PCI-e slots may only deliver up to 75W. Which is why then some of the "bigger" cards have a separate feed from the main PSU. This should be the 6 pin plug (2 rows of 3). .....

Somewhere in the PCs manual/spec it should state what wattage the PCI-e slot can handle. I'm pretty sure your PC/card should be OK if you have a 6 pin plug coming from the PSU. This would imply that it was made anticipating that you may indeed be using a (PCI-e) graphics card that requred additional power.

Must admit though, the ATI drivers were a bit flakky/unreliable.

I've since tried installing the card on a Dell T7400 and am having major problems due to the ATI drivers not installing. This would seem to be a clash with the T7400 motherboard (as the card was working with the 470). The card physically works but the PC/Windows 7 64bit, won't accept the ATI driver.

Was wondering if you'd managed to get the card running? and has it been stable?

Regards

Danny

" I've read 450-500W."

I don't do laptops. I don't like the burnt legs.lol:emotion-5:

This is a recommended Min wattage for system builders when designing a gaming system. I didn't double check but that sounds right for a Geforce gts 295 SLI graphics card (might be gts 285). 450-500W would be for one gpu. If I were to add a second gts 295 I would add 125w per high end sli gpu as a rule for my systems.

 It doesn't hurt to have too much available wattage but not enough  wattage can cause bsod or other serious problems. I have learned the hard way that the power supply may be the most important thing in the system. If it fails, it can take everything else with it. DONT CHEEP OUT ON YA POWER SUPPLY.

The new ati crossfirex cards seem to be more efficient, run cooler, and require a little less power than the nvidi SLI cards. I don't think your card requires that much power but I would upgrade your power supply for sure. I am usually use corsair, antec, ocz, and cooler master(might be cool tech cant remember). I did not put that in order from my 1st choice. I like the first 3 about the same at this time but i alway check company customer service ratings b4 I buy.

 I am about to build a system that requires almost 1500W. I only found one 1500W 85%+ efficient power supply. I don't remember the name of that one but I will try it out. it seemed to be high quality and I think it had 6 12V rails.

I don't know your system so I can not say for sure what Wattage you will need but (if I'm allowed to say this) New Egg.com has a good wattage calculator if you know all your system hardware, its under computer parts/ power supply's/ desktop power supply/ wattage calculator(this works great and I no longer do the math my self).

if you buy your power supply online, they should have a wattage calculator.

 You can also do a web search for power supply wattage calculator and something should come up.

Dell may have a wattage calculator too, I haven't checked.

another thing to conceder is the age of your system. I have had a couple of system go up in smoke when I changed the power supply. Granted the systems had problems already but I was fairly sure it  was due to voltage issues. I checked the power supply's and usually they would still be good. I have only had 1 or maybe 2 bad ones in this situation.

Hope this help ya a little

dell t7400 power supply even though it is 1000w is only 18a max on any of the 6 12v rails.. this is not enouguh to run many of the newer video cards that take 30-42 a..

Dell says there is not upgrade path for this..

I have bought an external powoer supply that fits in a bay.. ie

FSP Boosterx 5 450W ATX 4CM BB 2*Fan Apfc Sli Supplementary Power Add on Retail

and the gtx560ti i was trying to use. which would have artifacts all over with the stock power supply works fine with this.

hope this helps others...

Just to let you know, many forum users have run the HD 5770 on the Dell 375 watt unit without any problems including on the XPS 430.  Just connect your 6-pin power  cable and you should not have any issues.   Even under full load, I don't think your system would use much more than 250 watts and the card itself around 85 watts.