New 9600 GT OC, old 350w PSU. Problem?

I decided to upgrade to a 9600 gt oc today, saw one @ Best buy around the $220 mark and figured why not. I got my tax returns back, and I'm feelin a bit wild. Witcher and other games run fairly well, but Ive had to turn stuff down.

I'm ready to upgrade from my 7600.

to get to the point: I cracked the case open and of course I have a 350w PSU in my Dell 8400, the specs on this card call for a 400w. With any other pc, this is not a real problem, but one of the drawbacks to having a Dell is that they are very unfriendly to upgrades. I could run out and buy a new PSU, but I'd have to mod my case for the power connection. Anyone who owns a Dell and has wanted to replace the psu knows of what I speak, the plug is in a different spot and there's no hole for the power switch.

Reading this review of this card, I see that the power draw full load on their tests werent even 250w.

Bottom line: is this 400w just a worst case they throw out there? Have you run a card in a similar situation. w/ a lower than supposedly minimum psu? I can and have modified a Dell case before and it's a bitch to do, I really dont want to go down that road again if I dont have to. I also dont want to spend any more cash on a new psu, I spent close to 350$ today already.

Good review -> This looks like the supplies with a high number of watt are overkill for almost any system. (When you don't use SLI)

A 400w power supply does not actually provide 400w to all channels, there should be a sticker on the PS that says how much it supplies for each rail. A 350w power supply might be okay if you are running one HD and a relatively low power CPU. And it should be perfectly fine under 2D mode (all the latest series from ATI and Nvidia have a power saving mode for 2D rendering) and it should only exceed your powersupply under full load/3D mode.

I ran a 1950pro on a 400w power supply no problem.

box calls out for 400w pci xpress compliant psu w/ a combined 12v current rating of 26a or more.

The bottom of my psu says 12va =18a 12vb =18a

so I guess combined is 36a? That sounds like it's alright. And the 7600 I already have is pci xpress of course, so I know that's all good

it says 12v rail a&b max output is 336w.

I kinda understand what's being said here. I think. This electronics bizness dealing with "rails" and such is brand new to me.

running a pentium 4 3.4 ghz

Maybe I should just go grab a new psu and be sure, or i could just slap in the card and see if it works. Then again, if it runs slow I wont know if the card is being powered insufficiently, or my system needs tuning.

I think I'm going to go get a carne asada burrito and mull this one over.

Insufficient power could causes symptoms very similar to problems caused by faulty motherboard, memory and other components, like system randomly reboot. So it's difficult to determine it. But still, if your PC works fine before, and when plug-in new video card and something weird occured - then something is wrong with either the PSU or card.

well, after much internal debate, and even more scouring every hoary geek tech den in town and hardware forum on the internet including Dell's, Ive decided to go w/ the Silencer 470w Dell

I can get it off Amazon for 80 bucks, and looking at the specs it has this 26a @ 12v and all that other bs it's supposed to. It looks like it was made for this card. And at 470w, I'm making a considerable upgrade, instead of just settling for a 400w which I almost bought earlier @ local pc place. And I dont have to cut my case or anything, it's a ten minute install, that's worth the cash right there.

"PC Power & Cooling" seems to be the preferred supplier for alternate Dell PSU, so if any other Dell users out there looking to upgrade to something that's supposedly trusted in the Dell community, theyre it. At least to nail down what you need, then hit Amazon and get it cheaper ='.'=