What Voltage Power Supply Needed for DAW

[Empneo]

I just bought a Dual Core AMD 64 x2 with 8 gig RAM, 3 internal SATA hard drives and 2 external eSata Lacie Hard drives. I run everything 64bit. The external eSata Lacie's uses external power. I was just wondering if I need a bigger power supply to run 3 sata hard drives, 8 gig RAM and a 265 NVidea vcard? The one that came with the computer is a 430w. Is that enough ?

Last night while showing my DAW to a friend, he suggested I get a bigger power supply ?

Should I ? Or is the one I have fine ?

Thanks

[Stephanie Pray]

Hi,
I have nearly the same set up as you, and I use a 750W power supply. I haven't had any problems with it. I used to have a 400W (maybe it was 430W, don't remember...) and had lots of trouble with crashing and overheating. My suggestion would be to get the larger one.
Take Care,
Steph :)

[rfiato]

430W is almost definitely not enough. 750W is probably erring a tad on the high side, but it's better to be safe than sorry, and you don't want your power supply running at, say, 95% capacity all the time. For comparison, I personally use a Cooler Master 750W power supply with a PC that has a power-hungry video card (240W), a quad core processor (95W), one hard disk, one DVD-RW drive, and a bunch of case fans. Don't forget to consider your processor when accounting for how much power you need. All other things equal, quad cores use more power than dual cores, and newer processors made with a 45nm fabrication process will use less power than the older 65nm CPUs.

Quality matters a lot with power supplies, as much as wattage does. A power supply that doesn't provide consistent, stable power can cause any sorts of issues with your computer. Corsair, Antec, Cooler Master, and Thermaltake Toughpower are good brands.