I have a Dell C521 LPX slim-line. It has a 280 watt power supply and I bought one of those tiny 9400 GT cards. After 24 hours, everything seems to be ok. I don't have any expansion slots in use or powering any USB devices other than keyboard mouse and charging ipod nano.|||nope, it wont hurt it but it will not run. if you graphic card is good, then am surprised that it runs on 300 watts. i doubt it can run with such less power as 280 watts.
a good graphic card like 256 or 512 MB cards need like 400 watts or higher. 280 watts is too less.
am pretty sure GT 9400 would need like 350-400 watts or higher.|||Your card should not require that much power unless it is working at full cpacity, and you are rarely going to need it to run at full capacity, it is sort of like overkill.
But having said that, it will still take more power to do day to day tasks than a light card. It is kind of like using a race car to go 25mph, it will still take more fuel and run out of gas quicker than a Honda.
When your system gets overloaded it may become slow to respond, or stall for a few seconds, but it should not crash, and you won't hurt anything, but you may in the long run shorten the life of your power supply
P.S. I think my bigger concern in your situation would be if that card was going to throw out too much heat. I would monitor your cpu temp and motherboard temp, and if that card makes everything run hotter, then it's not a good idea|||if you have a card that draws more than your power supply outputs, whenever you put a load on ur card ur computer is gonna crash cuz it cant provide enough juice|||ummm yea you need more power cuz when the card starts demanding more power and it cant get it it wont work|||24 hours is too short a time to tell but usage time will get to it !
Continuous demand will run your PSU to its grave !
The PSU is not just there for the card, it is there for everything in your PC !
NVIDIA states that you need a 300 W MINIMUM for the card alone.
For the right way of calculating the power a PSU must give out, you MUST look at the BIG picture and take many other things into account not just the graphics card.
The real lowdown on how much power is needed for PC systems !
For your reference, following are details that illustrates approximately* how much wattage you will need to run various normal common components in a PC system ( the components are on the left and the wattage required on the right):
The Motherboard: 15-30
Midrange to high-end CPU: 40-100
RAM: about 7 per 128MB (or 56 W per GB)
PCI add-in card: 5
High-End graphics board: 60-100 (some take more)
IDE/SATA hard drive: 10-30
Optical CD/DVD drive: 10-25
Your NVIDIA 9400GT takes 10 W less than the bottom of the norm.
So let's calculate a system (again, this is an approximation*) with a middle of the road motherboard and CPU, 2 Gigs of RAM, 2 PCI cards (including the (high-end) graphic cards), 1 hard drive and 1 optical drive.
That would be 30+100+112(128MB X 8 X 2 = 2Gigs @ 7 per 128MB)+10(2 X 5)+50+30+25 = 357
* It has to be an approximation as I don't have all the specs so compare your entire computer specs with the list and refine the math on your own, you will then know what PSU you should get.
NOTES:
Leave yourself a bit of slack in your calculation for future hardware - Example: As calculated above, I would consider a PSU of at least 400 Watts and get up to 500 Watts if the price difference is not too much for you.
Also, always compare PSUs on cost AND caliber, in other words, go for power supplies that have a "quality build" never for one where the cost is cheap (because you can be sure it's not only the price that is that way).
Best PSU manufacturers at the moment are brands like Antec, Cooler Master, Corsair and Thermaltake.
And measure your actual PSU so that you buy one that fits the case.
P.S.: My guide is partly based on this link: http://static.tigerdirect.com/html/power…
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