General question about power supply

Hello geeks.

What kind of hardware can a 250W PSU take? I've got a mini-ATX unit with a 250W PSU. I'm am going to switch out my CD-RW drive for a DVD-RW drive. I don't think that should be a problem. But, I've also been toying around with the idea of loading a spare DVD drive into an open bay and adding a 2nd hard drive. Do you think the 250 can take that? Or would it be wise to get a new power supply unit?

Thanks.

 

assuming you're talking about the computer in your sig ... I think it should, it's a bit of a tight squeeze but so long as you don't have any heat issues you should be fine

 

Yeah, it's the computer in my sig.

Thanks for your reply. I guess I'll try each one one at a time and see how it handles. The DVD went in without a hitch, by the way! (Well, I guess the only hitch is that the DVD burning software is in Japanese...but hopefully I can get that sorted out).

Thanks again.

 

This is a useful tool to calculate your recommended Power Supply Wattage:

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

Also note that this is recommended. You can get by with less.

 

Do NOT buy a cheap power supply . . . last March (a date that haunts me) I was happily building my new system - I bought the Intel D865GBFL board, the P4 3Eghz processor, a GB of 400mhz ram . . . the works. I blew my entire budget on this build. The case I purchased came without a power supply, but I decided to use a 450W P4 ATX supply I had from a previous P3 build (brand "Real PC Power Titanium series" - it had 3 fans and they were adjustable, and I got it cheap). It had worked flawlessly for the P3 system since 11/2003, so after checking the requirements of my new components I opted to re-use this PS. All went well till about midway in loading the O.S. (XP pro) . . . then it blew up. I'm speaking in literal terms here . . . it did blow up! Not like a bomb, but I heard a loud POP and a "ting, ting" sound - and the system just died. A forensic examination revealed a component in the PS blew and the "ting ting" sound I heard was half the shell of this component hitting the exhaust fans in the PS. No idea why this happened . . . the PS met all the requirements. Bad day. Good news is the board was fried, but my CPU and RAM were (and are) ok . . . except one stick of 512MB 400mhz Samsung ram wants to downgrad to 333mhz . . . I'v manually set the freq at 400, and except for some griping from Sandra it's been fine