Help selecting power supply wattage

[luciusad2004]

Hello,

Im getting a small computer up and running for my girlfriend.

I need to know what size power supply will be good for it.

Inside it has,

Mother board, micro ATX
Pentium 4, I think it's 2.8 GHz
DVD drive
CD-RW
1 Harddrive , not sure what RPM
On board graphics at the moment, but i might upgrade it to a dedicated AGP graphics card. Nothing to powerful though
I think it might have 512 MB of ram.

If i can swing it I might get her a pci wireless adapter card, but im not counting on it right now.

Its not going to be over-clocked, and she isn't going to use it for heavy gaming, maybe something like The Sims 2 every now and then.

How much power do you think i should supply this thing with?

I was thinking along the lines of 350 Watts. Is this to little?
As i said she isn't going to be putting any ultra heavy workloads on it. Knowing her she will use it for browsing the web, doing some homework once in a while, and every now and then she might load up a game.

Thanks for any replies. : )

If i get a chance maybe ill find some way to mod this and post up a work log. No promises though... i wouldn't want to mess up her computer on accident, ... even though she said i could do it

Thanks again

-Lucius

[.Maleficus.]

For that, I'd say you'd probably be fine with 350-400 watts. If you're looking for something cheap and reliable, I'd look at Ultra products. I have an Ultra V-Series 350W PSU for my tester PSU and it works great, and it is very cheap. Check TigerDirect for them.

[luciusad2004]

awesome. Thank you. I might be adding some lighting to this eventually (i came up with an idea that my gf actually likes) so i might look for something a bit higher and moderatly reliable.

By lighting i mean, one MAYBE two cold cathode, or some led's. Not sure. I dont really know how to work with led's, although this would be an oppurtunity to learn... and after all isn't that what modding is all about?

Thanks for all of the input.

edit: I checked out those powersupplies and they seem like a good deal. Alot of them even seem to be modular wich would be great since the emachines case she has could use all the airflow it can get.