# what will happen with too low psu?



## metaldemon (Aug 4, 2011)

hey,

i have a 8800gt here and im planning to put it in my pc tonight. though in an other post of building my pc ( the post ) i have been told that the videocard requires at least a 650 w psu...

what will happen if the wattage is lower than 650 w? will it cause damage or will it just run at lower efficiency?

please reply quickly =D


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## Johnny1982 (Oct 15, 2010)

You may experience lock-ups, BSOD's, Artifacts onscreen, Restarting, etc, etc. It all depends also on the quality of the PSU and how low powered it is. Obviously a lower power unit will cause the above to be more frequent. It comes down to that eventually it can destroy your GPU by not being able to supply a constant power delivery to the card.


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## metaldemon (Aug 4, 2011)

thanks for the reply. i will respond this evening on how well the system runs... is there any way to see how much power the psu is giving to the cpu, gpu, mobo & ram?


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## Johnny1982 (Oct 15, 2010)

metaldemon said:


> thanks for the reply. i will respond this evening on how well the system runs... is there any way to see how much power the psu is giving to the cpu, gpu, mobo & ram?


The only device I know of is a Kill-a-Watt meter: ThinkGeek :: Kill-A-Watt


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Brand & Model of the PSU you will use with the 8800GT?


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## MPR (Aug 28, 2010)

According to a Tom's Hardware test the 8800 GT uses 142 W at idle and 249 W at peak.

If you are considering putting this into a brand-name computer (HP, Dell, etc.) you need to closely examine the PSU as many of these computers use cheap, low output PSUs.

I put an 8600 GT in a Dell a few months back and immediately had it crash. I then looked at the PSU and found out that it was only rated at 300 W. I replaced the PSU with a 550 W I had in an old build and the comp works fine.


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## Johnny1982 (Oct 15, 2010)

According to another thread the OP started he was using a FSP 400w PSU, which is just as useless. 650w would be optimal for a 8800gt, it uses double the power to a 8600gt.


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Using a low quality/under powered PSU may run fine for a limited amount of time while it damages the other components.

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f210/power-supply-information-and-selection-192217.html


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