I am currently looking to upgrade my GeForce 6800 video card to a GTS 250. http://www.evga.com/products/moreIn... My concern is my PSU. The GTS has a "Minimum of a 450 Watt power supply. (Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 24 Amps.)" From what I can tell, my PSU has a 460W max and I believe 32A. The label is almost totally obscured, but looking around I found this image of the label http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h... which is identical to the part of my label I can see. Am I reading my PSU label correctly? Do I have 32A max on my +12 V rails with a 460W max? If so it seems that it would be sufficient to run the new video card, but I am not sure. Also the PSU is about 4 years old now if that matters. The rest of my specs: Dell XPS Gen 5 Pentium D 3.0 GHz 1GB DDR2 Ram (upgrading to 4 gigs) 250 GB Hard Drive 16x DVD/RW Windows XP (I have seen posts similar to this one here, but wanted to be certain.) Thanks

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Each +12v rail on that psu provides 17a with a max combined +12v of 32a. Your pc will run off +12v_A rail. That leaves the 17a +12v_B rail to run a video card; that falls short of the 24a required. Without checking, the 24a requirement sounds about right for a GTS250. You'll need a new psu. This one has a single 60a +12v rail. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... Skip

Wattage calculators are fairly useless. A 500W PSU is adequate for just about all systems these days, provided it's a good one & has the proper amperage specs. Maybe someone will develop an amperage calculator someday? So what's all this rubbish about multiple 12 volt rails?

Thanks for the replies. So, the only place that the video card would draw amps from would be B rail which could supply 17A. This would be going through the 6 pin connector. No power comes to the card from it being plugged into the motherboard where the A rail is supplying power? Would I need a video card that requires 17A or less from the rails if it is only getting power from one rail? This multiple rail thing is screwy. Thanks again.