How far will a 250Watt PS get me?

[Jugernot]

I just got a Dell Dimension 4500 as a second machine and upgraded the CPU to a P4 2.26GHz. As soon as I booted it up, I ran some benchmarks and did a soft reboot. On bootup it didn't recognize the install of WinXP that I had just been running and I had to do a reinstall.

This system has a 250Watt PS:

P4 2.26GHz
Intel 845E Mobo
Geforce 4 MX420 AGP
512MB DDR PC2100
Western Digital 100gig HD
IBM 60gig HD
Liteon 16x DVDROM
LG 16/10/40 CDRW
Adaptec 2920 SCSI card
SCSI 100MB Internal ZIP Drive
Belkin PCI 10/100 NIC
Plus a few USB peripherals...

Although I haven't tested very long since reinstalling, this system was very stable with it's default 2.0GHz P4 from factory. Do you guys think a 250watt PS would work for this config? I'm guessing not...

Thanks guys!

Jugs

 

[Doh!]

I can just hear your computer cry for more juice... Ouch! that sounds very painful:Q

I think you've got lots of nice parts to be associated with such a weak PS. I'm very frugal when buying parts but not when it comes to buying a PS. It supplies the necessry blood to all the creatures in your machine. Try a new PS (300W or higher would nice but get a dependable brand like Antec, Enermax).

 

[Jugernot]

Well after comparing pinouts of the ATX connectors and making sure this Dell is infact a standard ATX config, I switched it out with a 300 watt Antec PS I had. Seems to work fine so far...

Too bad I don't have any voltage/temp monitoring on this board.

Jugs