PC Power Supply Question
 

Ok - I'm finally putting together my new PC, and I think I may have screwed up. I purchased a Seasonic S12 550w power supply. On the 12 volt rails it looks like it has 18 amps per rail, and a total of 41A across all 4 rails.

My PC is a E6600 Core 2 Duo, which apparently is 65 watts. The motherboard is an Asus P5B Deluxe, and I'm guessing about 25 watts needed there. The memory will be 2 PC6400 DDR2 (?) 1gig sticks for a total of 2 GB. Finally, I'm thinking of getting the Nvidia 8800GTS card for the graphics. According to newegg, the specs for the card are: Minimum of a 400 Watt power supply.
(Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 26 Amps.)

Sooo...a couple questions -

is 550 watts going to be enough?
Do I have enough amps on my 12v rails?

I'm JUST learning this stuff so I'm thinking I may be underpowered here. It's taken me about 4-5 months, money from Christmas/birthday, etc., to save up to build a new PC and I would be really upset if I find out I screwed it up by buying the wrong power supply. I realize now I should have spent the extra $$$ and purchased the 650w version, but it's too late now :(.

Thanks for the help!

You should be fine. Here is a forum I frequent when I need pc hardware help.

Here is their Power Supplies section:

http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=93

I'm not so sure. It LOOKS like the 8800GTS requires a 26 amp rail, while the Seasonic supports only 18 amps PER rail.

See, I'm not too sure, because I like you built a computer and I only know as far as I researched hehe.

But, I think thats why there are 4 +12v rails. So you are getting more then enough for a single 8800gts.

The 8800GTS needs 26A total -- it's drawing it from 2 rails -- the one plugged directly into it, and the one plugged into the motherboard (the big monster plug has an extra 12V rail in it).

The MB and CPU and other plug-in boards (sound, network, modem, etc.) draw mostly from the 3V & 5V rails.

You should be just fine. You'd probably still be OK with TWO 8800GTS boards.

Thanks, dacman!