Intel P45 is from year 2008 and need a 24pin connector. The GTX260 need PCIe power support = you need a ATX2.2 (min) PSU with min. 450W, better: ATX 2.5 500W

I dunno if the design of the bestbuy 500W has changed since then. They're meant to be a'ight.

Seasonic 500 or 550W

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-05-21, 00:56:

Seasonic 500 or 550W

Cheers,

That's monstrously overkill. This system hardly needs 300W.

brian105 wrote on 2021-05-21, 01:33:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-05-21, 00:56:

Seasonic 500 or 550W

Cheers,

That's monstrously overkill. This system hardly needs 300W.

GTX 260 has a TDP of 182W https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gtx-260.c217
CPU has a TDP of 65W https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/p … 33-mhz-fsb.html

Add the motherboard, sound card and drives, etc and a 300W PSU would be cutting way too close, or not at all, depending on voltage rail distribution, IMHO .

500 watts was pretty standard for that period. The likely real world power draw is probably about 260 watts full bore but you run the risk of tripping over current protection if you cut it too close. Also, power supplies operate a peak efficiency at between 60%-80% which is something else to think about.

I have been using a 45$ EVGA 450 watt PSUs with a lot of my retro builds and I think something along those lines would suit you just fine. A good 400 watt power supply is as low as I would go, 600 watts is the most I would get unless you want to go SLI.

AcBel API4FS06 (550W ) might be a cheap and quality option, but only if you don't mind modifying it. You'll need a source of 6pin power connectors to add to it.
It's a great PSU from some Sun workstation, thousands of them got liquidated as NOS years ago so there's still a lot of new ones floating around on eBay.

It has 3 12V rails. The 2 strong ones go to the ATX 24pin and the CPU 8pin connectors (these do *not* split into 20/4pin).
The weakest 12V rail goes to the drive connectors. It's not enough juice to drive a demanding graphics card that uses two 6pin connectors, so in that circumstance, molex->6pin adapters don't really work.
It doesn't have any built-in 6pin power connectors for graphics cards. You can add them though, and solder them to one (or both) of the higher rated 12V supplies internally.

I tried to use that PSU with a GTX260 by using molex->6pin adapters and it seemed to work at first, but it started tripping overload when I played Oblivion. After I soldered some 6pin harnesses to the stronger 12V rails, then it was fine. I used it for several years, over that time upgrading to a GTX275 and then a 285. This was with a Phenom2 board, maybe more power hungry than yours but probably not by a huge amount.

I wouldn't try to run that card in a complete system with a PSU in the 300W-400W range, it would be asking for trouble unless the load is balanced just right for the PSU.

I should mention I've have had a persistent problem in this system with the PSU tripping overload on rare occasions when I switch it on. But it did the same thing (no better or worse) with all 3 of those graphics cards, 2 copies of the API4FS06 PSU, and a Delta 850W I bought later, so I don't think the API4FS06 was to blame. After trying many things I think it's a motherboard problem, not the PSU.

If you shop for used PSUs out of old brand name PCs/workstations/servers, sometimes you'll find a bargain when 100 copies of the same model get dumped on the market.
You have to be careful though to investigate if it will work in a standard ATX system and has all the connectors you need. The Delta 850W I bought was a bargain find like that which came originally from an HP, but it turned out to be slightly mis-dimensioned for an ATX case.
I got lucky because my case turned out to have a glued on piece of plastic inside that, when removed, made it a perfect fit for the fatass HP/Delta PSU.

If Dell PSUs were sold as cheapie PSUs they'd probably be rated double.... they've got about 20% headroom over nominal rating I find. Problem with them is that they will only have exactly as many connectors as the Dell system needed at exactly the right lengths.

Hey thank you all for everything. I ended up getting an EVGA 550 watt PSU 😀

Nice. That's a good PSU and will serve you well.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-30, 00:18:

Nice. That's a good PSU and will serve you well.

Thank you, for sure! 😀