PCA Forums

for the mean time till my replacement power supply arrive im using a 250 watt unit on my athon 2600 rig with 2 hd , a dvd burner ,cd-r,soyo dragon 1 gig -2700 ram and like 8 fans plus a fx5600 video card.
i know im under powered due to rig lock up when sit for a bit - and then even now and then !

how does it even boot up ?

Do you really need 8 fans ?

i have some shut down also my case lighting right now

Unplug anything you don't need. CD, extra drives, etc. Shut it down when not using it.

You are taking some chance. A 250W PSU is not going to be a quality one, and is completely inadequate for a modern rig. If on top of that you're over drawing the current from it it's going to make the regulators in the PSU even more unreliable, which means your voltages aren't going to be stable.

Modern mobos and CPUs are rather fussy about voltage.

If the voltage is occasionally going too low it's not going to hurt anything, just cause lockups.

Problem is when voltage regulation is poor, the voltage is also likely to by too high and that can cause damage.

an e-machine i just looked at for a friend has a 120W POS...errr....PS in it. no wonder both optical drives did not work at the same time!

A lot of people would be put into their place when they see just how little components acutally draw, and possibly how overrated some PS's are.

viperoni-

agreed. the quality vs. quantity of power supplies is often overlooked. kind of like home theatre amps...some peeps think an off-the-rack sony POS "110W/channel" receiver can compete with a quality 2-3W/channel tube amp, etc.

i don't remember which site, but tom's or anand's had a PS roundup that tested tons of PS's and the results were pretty interesting.