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Power Question

B

bonus1000

n00b
Joined
Apr 14, 2002
Messages
33
OK, I've assembled a nice extra machine for myself out of about 3 other machines that were sitting around here. Basically it's a P4 1.6 (OC'd to 2.2), 512 PC2700, GF4 TI4200, Abit BD7 Raid MoBo. CDR, DVD, Floppy, Zip100. 20Gig system drive, and two 80Gig drives in Raid0 for data (mostly mp3s & mame roms). The (highly technical MSPaint) diagram below shows how I wired the power for it.

power.JPG


This was the only way to do it given the PSU I have, and cable length. (Its in a typical cheiftec type case).

Questions:
1. Is an Antec 350 enough to power all this?
2. Is it OK to share my RAID array with those two fans?
 
A 350w Antec PSU will be more then big enough for that setup. 350w is big enough for most any system. I dont think there will be an issue with having the fans and those two hard drives on one line because fans dont draw very much power. Usually around 3w.
 
I am looking to upgrade my video card from a geforce 2 mx200 to an ati 9800 pro 128mb. From what I understand, the 9700 and 9800 cards are extremely power hungry. Given that I am not a well of money (yeah, like anyone is!), I do not want my el-cheapo power supply to die and take my expensive new video card with it. My computer is a 1.3 athlon, with 768 pc133, a 16x8x40 cdrw, zip100, 3.5" floppy, and two hard drives, one 20gb 5400rpm, and one 60gb 7200rpm. I am also running 3 case fans and a cpu fan.

My question is, can I trust my PSU to power my computer peripherals, plus handle the draw from the new video card? I'm at work right now (no internet at home yet) so I don't remember exactly what the PSU is, but I know that I only paid $20 shipped for it. IIRC, it is a no-brand-name 400w psu.

Thanks for your help!

Bill
 
Originally posted by Steppanwolf
I am looking to upgrade my video card from a geforce 2 mx200 to an ati 9800 pro 128mb. From what I understand, the 9700 and 9800 cards are extremely power hungry. Given that I am not a well of money (yeah, like anyone is!), I do not want my el-cheapo power supply to die and take my expensive new video card with it. My computer is a 1.3 athlon, with 768 pc133, a 16x8x40 cdrw, zip100, 3.5" floppy, and two hard drives, one 20gb 5400rpm, and one 60gb 7200rpm. I am also running 3 case fans and a cpu fan.

My question is, can I trust my PSU to power my computer peripherals, plus handle the draw from the new video card? I'm at work right now (no internet at home yet) so I don't remember exactly what the PSU is, but I know that I only paid $20 shipped for it. IIRC, it is a no-brand-name 400w psu.

Thanks for your help!

Bill
Click to expand...

I wouldn't trust anything generic but thats just me. PSU's and ESD damage are the top causes for hardware problems. It doesn't pay to go cheap on the PSU.

Also i wouldn't waste your money buying a 9800 pro. I would save your money and upgrade your CPU and RAM and then buy a video card then. The new lineup is due out this spring so they will be alot faster then the current ones and the 9800 pro's will drop in price more.
 
Cool... I figured I was being a little too paranoid. I just see so many people with PSU's of 450W or more lately, that it made me think my 350 was a little small. I've had it running now for about 15hrs on Prime95 and so far no problems. Thanks for the quick replies!
 
I wouldn't trust anything generic but thats just me. PSU's and ESD damage are the top causes for hardware problems. It doesn't pay to go cheap on the PSU.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I figured as much. Unfortunately at the time I had no money at all but still needed a computer for my schoolwork. So I got what I could get.

My plan was to get a new motherboard and memory, I was looking at a new gigabyte board with matched pair of corsair memory. That would be costing me more though than the videocard upgrade, but I know that the mobo and memory would be the smarter way to go.

Sigh...why does life have to get in the way of computing? :D
 
Originally posted by bonus1000
Cool... I figured I was being a little too paranoid. I just see so many people with PSU's of 450W or more lately, that it made me think my 350 was a little small. I've had it running now for about 15hrs on Prime95 and so far no problems. Thanks for the quick replies!
Click to expand...

Thats because people dont know half as much as what they think they do :) .

I was over at the Gamespot forum where people reply to threads faster then you can keep up. Its like 10 pages a day per forum. And i was getting some game info and decided to respond to a few hardware threads, and i swear 90% of them had no idea what they were talking about. They all go off what they hear from other people. It was sad really lol. I got tired and came back to the Hard Forum cause they got NOTHIN on us :p .
 
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