Best Video Card for 320W Power Supply?


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How's it going Neowin?

Long story short, I am working with a desktop that will be used for basic video editing and things of that nature.

The system is an i7.

I currently have 8 GB of DDR3 Ram.

It is using Intel HD Graphics.

I will be using CS6.

I think the slots I have are 1 (16x PCI Express) and 2 (PCI Express 2)

My guess would be the 16x PCI Express for the card.

320 W is the Power Supply I have.

Thanks in advance for all feedback.

It's a microtower.

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Simply put? Even if you have a gold rated (80%+ efficient) or a platinum rated (90%+ efficient) PSU, your system will probably already draw all of the power your PSU can muster as it is, a 320 watt PSU simply won't cope with that setup and a discrete video card as well, especially if my suspicion is correct that it's a cheaptastic PSU that came with the case and probably provides poor ampage on the 12v PCI-E rail.

In short? you need a more powerful PSU, I'd recommend 500w if you don't overclock, 650 if you do. You shouldn't even really need a discrete GPU if all you're doing is video editing, the onboard graphics should suffice. Even said I'd still recommend getting a stronger PSU

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You should be fine with a 650, but I'd recommend not to take the risk, as you already have a lot of going on with that 320 Watts of your PSU

How's it going Neowin?

You have no idea

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No gaming, pure video editing.

When mentioning "Basic editing" and "cs6" im thinking you plan on using premiere/aftereffects/encore...

if correct CS6 (as a whole) is neutral to video card brands, but "cuda based" encoding benefits greatly from nvidia cards.

Then again, with that power supply, you may want to look at budget (very low entry level)

600 series cards .... (ie GeForce GT 610, which also accommodates nicely on micro towers)

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