Hardware Cheap graphics card in cheap system

[person66]

OK, so I gave my old PC to my friend after I built the one I'm using now. It was just a cheap acer aspire T180, with the regular 250 watt power supply. Anyways, He wants me to put a cheap graphics card in it (geforce 210 512mb, or Geforce 8400 GS 256mb), but I'm not sure it will work. According to the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator, it needs 248 watts for the 210, or 276 watts for the 8400 gs (those are the reccommended ones, not the minimum ones). However, according to newegg, the graphics cards need at least 300 watts to work.

So, My question is, will they work? and if they will which graphics card should we get? And how much increase would he see compared the integrated nVidia MCP61?

http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/desktop/0000/Acer/AspireT180/AspireT180sp2.shtml

 

[Ritsuki]

If 276W is the recommanded power with the calculator, it should work without problem. If it's the minimal power, they will work, but there's a chance that it will cause some problems like freezes, intempestive shut downs,... In this case, I would buy another power supply (350W).