PCA Forums

Hello all...

Just wanted some input. I'm thinking of upgrading to a 1.4 GHz T-Bird and I was wondering if I would also have to upgrade my PSU. A friend of mine told me that anything over a 1 GHz CPU "requires" a 2.03 compliant PSU. I hadn't heard this, so I turn to you....

Here is the case/cpu that I currently have.

Addtronics 6896A Case
300W ATX PSU Model: CWT-300ATX

Can anyone lend some support?

Thanks in advance.

I'd say it depends on the quality of the ps but I have a cheapy leadman 300w in my 1.4 setup and my brother has a deer 300w in his and both are doing just fine. Tried an addtronices 2.01 300w(same one as yours) and it worked fine too but I didn't use it for long. Not sure what the rating is on the leadman. Of course mileage may vary depending what all you have in your system.

I would say as long as it's on AMD's list of approved PS,you got no worries.I have several Enermaxs and a Antec303 and not had any problems.

Just upgrade the CPU and try it... if its unstable then upgrade the PS too.. I think the worst that'll happen is it will work ok at 1.4ghz... but if you try to O/C it won't because it won't have enough juice to handle the higher strain.

I did it...

It is rock solid with the current PSU.

Thanks to the advice of all.

Yeah it seems AMD went a little overboard on the recommended power supplies. It states a 400 watt power supply for anything over 1.2 gig I think. I had an Antec 300 watt and after reading the recommended power supply list I went and bought the Antec 400 watt one just for peace of mind. Both my son and I have AMD 1.4 gigs. He is still running a 300 watt power supply. Both our machines are doing fine so it seems maybe I didn't really need to upgrade my power supply. But at least now I have bragging rights over my son! Heh heh.

Those power supply requirements are a farce. I have a 250W in my Enlight case that's 2-3 years old and running my XP 1600+ fine.

Really Jethro Bodine ?? Guess my Fortron Source 300W will do then on my XP1600+

Jethro:

If you load up a system with all the goodies, such as zip drives, CD-RW drives, multiple hard drives, and especially lots of fans, then you can bet your hard earned money that a higher quality power supply (over the standard "250 Watt" or "300 Watt" power supplies that come with cases) will increase system stability. What we are really talking about here is the ability to hold a tight voltage regulation, and the ability to support the load under high current demands. Failure to do this might not be obvious to a normally-clocked system, but overclockers know that headroom in the power requirements is necessary to keep a system stable as the temperatures increase, or the tweaking levels increase. I found that my 1 GHz T-Bird system became much more stable once I replaced that Deer 300 Watt power supply that came with the full tower case. I found that out after going through numerous bios updates (on an Asus A7V) and playing around with so many fans that I lost count. My current power supply in that system came from STEP Thermodynamics (rated at 465 Watts) at a cost of $69. They appear to be out of the commercial business now, but the power supply lives on.

My new system, a custom modded mid-tower with a rheobus (for fan control) and a Kanie Hedgehog Type W heat sink, has an Enermax 431 Watt power supply ($119). I learned my lesson on the T-Bird system. Trust me, get a decent power supply if you are experiencing any stability issues. By the way, my new system isn't complete yet - I'm waiting for the Athlon XP 2000+ to arrive in January 2002. My mainboard (Soyo K7V Dragon Plus) and memory (Corsair 256 MB PC2400 CL2 DDR SDRAM) arrive this Thursday. I can't wait to get this baby completed, but on the other hand, I can't spend money like there's no tomorrow!

i was told to go with 350 to 400 ps on my 1.4 gig cpu .i'm running 300 now and 350 would be better i think.

hows this then
i got 14 ghz tbird running at 1.53
asus a7v266 e
cd burner
dvd drive
2 hard drives
geforce3
sblive
230 watt power supply

Cheers

looks like you're running on luck...
230w for all that??... wow... have u monitored your voltage to see if you drop below 4.8v at full load?

i thought youd get a kick out of that im suprised it runs as well

I also think that the quality of the power supply is more important the the size alone
cheers

umm, got 1.4 bird, kt7a-raid, 768 megs ram, 16x aopen dvd, plextor 12x10x32 cdrw, 2 x 45 gig 75GXP's, sb live x-gamer 5.1, AT! TV-wonder, d-link nic, visiontek g2 ti200, delta 68 cfm fan, 3 80mm case fans, cpu @ 1.85 volts @ 1470, been playin with it, Rock Solid (runs for months on end) on a YoungYear 300 watt psu, really should get somethin better though ..