Core i3-2100 with 65W power supply?

Question

Did i totally screw things up on this build? I have a an Antek ISK 300-65 mini-itx case which has a 65w PSU on it. I bought a Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge (Not the 'T' version), an OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G, a Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10TPVT 1TB all running on a ASUS P8H67-I DELUXE motherboard with 4GB of DDR3 1333 RAM.

What worries me is that the PSU will not be sufficient to power everything. I don't think i can put a different PSU in the case. Should i return the case and get a different one and bigger PSU? I also bought a LITE-ON Internal BD-COMBOdrive mistakenly. (Didn't notice the "slim" requirement for the case) If I could, I'd like to put all this in a mini-itx case. Do you think I should go to a Micro-ATX instead? You can see the items I bought on this wishlist

Solution 1

Even though the last part is a shopping recommendation (for a better case) there is still a valid question in there, the PSU requirements: Based on this PSU calculator you need a minimum of 126W. This is a rough estimate based on the info you gave and I'm sure you can get away with less depending on your cpu utilization. But I would definitely put a slightly more powerful supply. In fact if I take the Blu-ray drive, the ssd, the hdd, and the RAM out of the picture it still says a minimum of 83 watts.

Solution 2

That's AWFULLY low wattage. I know those are low power components, but even without looking up the parts and figuring the expected usage on this machine I think that's way too low - even if it works you have no overhead (and running power supplies at high usage kills their lifespan). I would recommend no less than 250-300W even for an extremely low power machine like this.

(Shopping recommendations are offtopic and so I haven't addressed that specifically; I actually recommend you edit that out of your question or it's at risk of closure.)

Comments

[SpaceCowboy74]

That's what i thought. Will the CPU work ok with the motherboard as long as i up the power? I'm thinking of going to a micro-atx case and using all the other parts as is.

[SpaceCowboy74]

Thanks. I am thinking of Micro-ATX cases instead. Should give me more power to run everything and i should be able to fit in the DVD drive.

[Supercereal]

That processor will be fine with your board as long as it has a more sufficient power supply. Personally I would recommend a sandy bridge chip over using others integrated options or a more power hunger dedicated graphics card.

[uxout]

I'm guessing this case is intended for use with an Atom processor or the like. I honestly laughed when I read '65W'...

[Supercereal]

@Shinrai "Core i3-2100 with 65W power supply?" got me to jump on this question... lol

[j-g-faustus]

@Kyle You could do it with a Core i3-2100T and careful component selection; system power consumption ~40W at full load according to xbitlabs

[uxout]

@j-g-faustus - You could do it, and it might be fine. You can also go skydiving without a backup parachute.

[Supercereal]

@J-G-faustus You could but the user doesn't have a 2100T he has a 2100... I'm sure you can do this with lots of other processors...

[SpaceCowboy74]

Thanks for all the help. I went out and got a Micro-ATX box with a 600W PSU. Overkill on power, but at least i have breathing room. Plus I can use the BD-Combo drive as a regular drive. Only thing i had to do was get a 2.5" - 3.5" drive adapter for the 1TB drive I have on the list.

[j-g-faustus]

@Kyle Sure, and I'm in full agreement with your answer. (Thanks for the calculator link BTW, it's the most accurate of its kind I've seen.) My comment was merely a slightly OT speculation on alternative scenarios where "i3-2100 with 65W PSU?" might actually work.

[Supercereal]

@j-g-faustus understood actually that link you posted was quite interesting... good find.