Power and you computer

Fidelis

If you've got a 1.4 or higher cpu, I think you need a 250watt+ psu or else everything will slowly die

Gerry

The americans tend to exaggerate this slightly, and they all run out and buy 450w power supplies. A good quality 250w is enough for most machines, the only way you need over a 300w psu is if you are using peltiers to cool your cpu, or if you have loads of fast hard drives, and most people don't. The critical thing is to get a good quality power supply, you can check amd's website for a list of approved ones, or you can go by the rule of thumb that if the psu costs next to nothing, it probably isn't a whole lot of good. A good quality 250watt psu is superior to a cheap 300w psu.

Gavin

On that topic. I am getting a new dual motherboard. At present I only have a 200W PSU. I also intend to hang 1 ide HD, 1 SCSI HD and 2 cdrom's off it.

Will i be needing a new CPU ?

Gav


[This message has been edited by Verb (edited 05-07-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Verb (edited 05-07-2001).]

Gladiator

im getting a 350 watt Enermax, one of the best if not the best psu.
now theres really no need for an average guy to get a 350, but i could be running 3 hard drives 5 fans and afew cd rom drive at any stage so i would need it

Jademan

The main reason i ask this is i have a small home network where the pdc is a dell optiplex with 4 40gb HD, 2 10/100 and a modem card. Now to my understanding Dell psu are only like 150w so does anyone think this is a problem...it seems to work fine at the moment.

Gladiator

YES get a 350, hell 150 watts is no were near enough to run 4 40gb hard drives, nics and a modem,

Gerry

I've done a little looking up, and those 4 drives will consume somewhere between 100w and 120w when spinning up, in normal operation somewhere between 30 and 60watts. I'd say your power supply is more like 200 watts, unless it is a slimline system, but I would recommend a better psu. Problem is dell has a habit of using non-standard wiring for their psu's, so a new psu may not work...

The network cards and modem aren't using much power at all, don't worry about them.

Jademan

I have read in a lot of places websites etc thatthe larger the PSU or power supply you have the better! But from your experiance why is this good and what is the side effects if any?

WhiteWashMan

the more powerful, the more things you can hook up to it. good if you have internal scsi adapters or extra ide adapters.
the only problem is that some of them are big and noisey. so make sure it will fit into your box and you dont end up having to hammer bits and bobs everywhere

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