Would a 500watt power supply be efficient for my current rig?

Question

i am adding a zalman cnps9700 nt, 4gb of crucial tracer memory(2.2v each), 1x 160gb hdd, 2x cd-rw/dvd-rw optical drives, ati radeon hd4870.

the hd4870 video card requires at least 450w of power. but with everything else added on i was wondering if that would overload my psu. what scares me is the 4gb of memory and the 2 disc drives. if my current specs are suitable for a 500w power supply then ill be happy.

Answer 1

Unless you are planning to get more hard drives, this should be fine.

Answer 2

The first person that answered didn't say that right, it is better to have the highest amps on the 12v rail and even better if it has more than that, also a 400 watt power supply would be plenty, if you go to video card reviews  like at techpowerup it shows how many watts the systems use max average and idle, the card that uses the highest power in there list only uses about 320 watts at full 3d load and that's card requires a 550 watt power supply, in other words your power supply wont even be sweating, even if it's name brand or not.

Answer 3

yes that will be good. make sure you get a name brand psu and remember, the less 12V rails, the better. pick a lower 12V rail PSU!

Answer 4

yep. thats plenty