230 watt PSU enough?

[gus669]

I was wondering if a 230 watt PSU has enough power for a MicroATX motherboard and a 1 gig celeron, 512megs of ram? All of the other components are onboard.

Because the board is smaller does that mean less power would be needed?

Its just that I'm thinking of buying a MicroATX case and it has a 230watt PSU in it. Plus most of the MicroATX cases I've seen also have smaller PSU's. I doubt you can upgrade because of the different sizes of the PSU. Is this common, or am I missing somthing? Something doesn't seem quite right.

 

[ski]

A good quality 230 watt PS should be ok.
A 1 GHz Celeron uses only about 27 watts, and the rest of the system should consume an approx. additional 150 watts assuming there is only 1 HD, 1 optical drive(CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-RW, etc.), 2 USB devices, CPU fan, and a system fans.

But if the PS is an el cheapo unit which is low on output on one of the 3 legs(12V, 5V, or 3.3V), or you plan to use more than 1 HD, more than 1 optical drive, more than 2 USB devices, loads of fans, and install more than 512 MB of RAM down the road, then 230 watts may not be sufficient.

 

[ftechguy]

I once had an old compaq presario mATX pc that came with a 145 watt PSU. I upgraded it to 2x256MB RAM, P3 1ghz, PCI video card, two optical drives, add-in ethernet card and larger 30gb hard drive. It was perfectly stable. You should be fine.