is 240 Watts enough to power a quad-core PC?

[Anonymous user]

im planning on getting a quad-core pc but i dont know what kind of power it needs. will the BE400-GR which is equivalent to the BE350G in usa, be sufficient? i want the ups just for power outages which do happen alot just a couple of times every like six month and i dont intend on using it during a power outage just need it so i can shut down the pc.

Message was edited by: dioxholster

[Anonymous user]

Another thing you should consider is that if the PC is under load, it can draw significantly more power than it does when it is idle.

just because your PSU is say 500 watts, you aren't going to be drawing that maximum load 24/7, unless you are talking about a render farm or some other high-performance computing application. (or distributed computing project.)

[BillP]

Well that can depend allot on the specific processor you use, however most (intel's for example) that are lower end quad cores use 95w for the processor alone, some up to 150w. Keep in mind though that that is for the processor and doesn't take into account your other devices, like video card, hard drives, fans, etc.

Most newer Video cards require power supplies of around 500-700w also. What this means for a PSU that is power factor corrected is that it could draw, upon start up, ~1.2 x the total listed wattage. If the UPS is undersized it could overload and drop the computer. You would want to make sure that your UPS could support the full inrush of the PSU and normal idle wattage as well. That being said, your probably going to need a bigger unit, like a 750 va unit.

[ginbot86_apc · Accepted solution]

400 VA should be enough just to shut down your computer, but using one like the BX1500 would allow you to actually do stuff while the power's out (I actually have one of these). I'd say, go ahead and use it.