I have a Acer7200D Pentium 4 1.8. Have gone from onboard sound to Sblive 5.1, to a 128 mg Ati 9600SE video card, and ram from 256 to 768 (do math 528 + 256) but I never upgraded power supply, could this be a cause of crashes. Tried to find what I have for power supply think it is 250 watts.
Stupid question about power supply
- Thread starter kenhwcan
- Start date
Zanmato
King
Quite possibly, yes. I did a quick tot up of your spec on here http://www.extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp and it came to just under 240w so I think a power upgrade might be warranted. You could always disconnect a couple of devices (maybe a CD drive) and try it again so see if it still crashes so you know can put it down to a power supply.
LuminaryJanitor
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2006
- Messages
- 3
Yeah, probably a good idea to check before buying a new one - mine's 450W and I still get crashes...
Id upgrade the powersupply, when a video card/processor is idle or doing small tasks like web browsing it uses much less energy than playing a game, I would buy a new powersuppy soon, as you are just getting crashes now but it is likely you would need to buy one anyway as it will blow anyday now.
Its basically just pocket change for a 400w...
Its basically just pocket change for a 400w...
Not all power supplies are created equal, just because its rated at 400 watts, or whatever, doesn't mean it will actually produce that much power in real life.
Do some research and buy a quality power supply, it will cost more, but many computer problems are caused by a bad (cheap) power supply.
Do some research and buy a quality power supply, it will cost more, but many computer problems are caused by a bad (cheap) power supply.
Zanmato
King
I think going with either Antec, Enermax, Tagan, Zalman or ThermalLake would be the best way to go. These are quality PSUs and most are pretty quiet. Usually if a motherboard is underpowered the memory could get corrupted - wouldn't want to be buying new RAM chips all the time.
