Hi everyone. I have a new ZT systems 7531ma computer and I added a EVGA Nvidea GeFORCE 9500GT PCI-e GPU. I am wondering if my psu is really adequate even though I have talked to techs at ZT Systems and Geek Squad all of whom all stated there should be no problems. See specs below.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Processor AMD Phenom™ II 955 Quad-Core Processor
Operating System Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Memory 6GB DDR3 Memory
Hard Drive(s) 1TB SATA Hard Drive
Optical Drive 22X DVD±R/RW
Graphics Integrated ATI Radeon 3000 Graphics
Audio 8-CH High-Definition Audio CODEC w/ jack sensing
Card Reader 19-in-1 Multiformat Card Reader
Networking 10/100/1000 Mb/s
Ports (1) PS/2 keyboard / mouse port, (6) Audio ports, (8) USB 2.0 ports (2 Front, 6 Rear), (1) RJ45 network port, (1) eSATA port, (1) DVI port, (1) VGA port, (1) HDMI port
Expansion Slots (Total) (2) PCI, (1) PCI Express x1, (1) PCI Express x16
Expansion Bays (Total) (2) 5.25" Exposed, (1) 3.5" Exposed, (4) 3.5" Hidden
Power Supply ATX 12V 350W

My PSU is made by DELTA and is identical to the specs of another DELT PSU below. (note- DELTA makes PSU's to ZT's specs)


Power Efficiency >5% at 100% Load; 115Vac/230Vac
Power Factor: Passive PFC (GPS-400AB A)
AC Input Voltage: Voltage Range: 100-130Vac\200-260VAC; nominal Voltage-115/230VAC
DC Output: +3.3v | +5v +12v1 | 12v2 | -12v | +5Vsb
Max Current: 18A | 25A 14A | 16A | 0.3A | 2.5A
Max Combined Power: 130W | 228W |
335W | 3.6W | 12.5W
Max Peak Power: 400W

Note- on my PSU it states a "peak Power of 400W but psu is rated 350W" this is on the tag. Also it states the the peak Watts on both 12V rails is 19Amps (Combined?)My video card is a EVGA GeForce 9500 GT PCI-e which the stated requirements are for a 350 watt or greater PSU withv a minimum of v18 Amps on the 12 volt rail.

Is my PSU realy adequate? Note- This is also a duel monitor card but I am only using 1 monitor. Thanks in advance.

A 9500GT should not pull that much power. I would say it would run, but 350W is not a very big power supply now.

Delta makes some Antec PSUs too. My PSU is actually a Delta with Antec rebadging.

Hello,

To answer your question right of the bat: your combined amps on both 12V rails is 19 (228W). So the short answer is yes, you (just barely) meet spec. I'd still look for a review that tells you how much that power the card actually eats on load.

Here's a PSU calculator that will crunch some approximations and raw data to tell you what PSU wattage you will probably need: http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html

I'm kind of leery of this PSU and here is why. Usually all of those ratings on your PSU are theoretical, maxes and peaks. First of all, its power efficiency is going to be low (Passive PFC and a really vague stated efficiency). Efficiency also gets lower as your load goes up, and I think you're going to be running your PSU near its limits if you do anything CPU/GPU hungry. So you're not going to get anywhere close to its rated sustained power. Also, IF I am reading the specs right (they are laid out in an unusual way to me), the 12V & 5V rail are sharing some current - so you'd want to go light on the hard drives & other I/O. Balancing between rails may also be a problem if one rail is being maxed out. It just doesn't look like a quality PSU.

As for the peak power, its only supposed to pull that momentarily. If it does it for a long time, it should shut down - I say should, because it could burn up if its low quality.

But that's a little dramatic/worst-case-scenario, and I think you'll probably be fine - especially if you don't do anything like running Furmark & Prime95 concurrently . It's made to be a low-power card, and it probably doesn't need what it says on the box. You just might want to think about investing in a better PSU if you want to add more parts. If/when you do, consider grabbing a high-quality single rail PSU to avoid all the calculating and malaise.

Hi everyone, Thank you for your quick response. Incidentally, I had this same card in my HP A1600N AMD Dual Core with a 300W PSU with the same AMP rating. About 6 months to a year later I began getting "Master Boot" errors or rather "Master Boot Record Cannot Be Found" or something like that. Almost as if something was wiping it out. I removed the the video card and I took the computer to Best Buy where they did a stress test on the CPU. They ran the test several times and for long periods (over 12 hours) but they could not get it fail. They also found several viruses. Unfortunately, I never made a recovery disk and re-installing windows from the recovery partition the problem continued. I believe there may have been viruses on the recovery partition. I never did put the video card back in and just put it on the shelf. The point to this story is 1- Make your recovery disk when you get a new system unless they give you the recovery Disk. 2- Make sure you have Anti-virus Software installed and updated. 3-Despite using a a lower wattage PSU (300 watts which was 50 watts less then the required minimum but with the same AMP rating), It appears that the lower wattage did not harm the computer. I might point out that only upgrade I made to the computer was to add the video card despite three other PCI slots that were available. Sorry for being long winded. My thanks to everyone who responded.