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How powerful should my psu be?

K

kcbass

Golden Member
My computer keeps randomly restarting and, while I thought it was because of service pack 2, I reformatted this weekend, and the restarts continue (not on as grand a scale, but they're still there). I currently use a 330 watt ps, and was wondering if it would be worth it to upgrade. I've been looking at the antec Neopower 480, because I like the idea of deciding yourself which cables come out of your ps. Good choice? Is there a better one? Is it even possible that my restarts are because of my ps? Any input would be appreciated. 
 
oh yeah...to see what I'm running in my computer (for power consumption purposes) check my rig below, and add a usb powered scanner. 
 
A quality 350W PSU should be more than enough, look for an Antec, Enermax, Sparkle or Fortron PSU.
 
Originally posted by: kcbass
oh yeah...to see what I'm running in my computer (for power consumption purposes) check my rig below
Click to expand...

Link does not lead to your pc. Power supplies get blamed for just about everything around here but are rarely found to be the problem. Do you have automatic restart turned off? Any clues in your event viewer?
 
Since you have a 330w Enermax, I don't think that it is your problem. When my power supply was going, it would cause the computer to shut off rather than to just restart. Have you made any recent changes to your system? What are your temps like? Doing any overclocking? You may also want to run Memtest.
 
Where would I find automatic restart or event viewer? Windows keeps telling me that I have a serious error caused by a device driver, but they won't tell me which one. My system's been the same since I put in the SATA drive, which was sometime in July, and I'm not overclocking. Memtest doesn't give me any errors, but it's never completed in my system. It always freezes somewhere in test 11. 
 
so, the error that keeps restarting my system is, according to microsoft, caused by a graphics device driver for my ATI AIW Radeon 8500DV, but I haven't installed the drivers for it yet, so the drivers i'm using are provided by microsoft....I emailed ATI last night and requested up-to-date drivers (since the video card is discontinued), but it just seems to me that if you provide a driver for hardware that the driver you wrote would be compatible with the operating system that you design.... 
 
Originally posted by: kcbass
so, the error that keeps restarting my system is, according to microsoft, caused by a graphics device driver for my ATI AIW Radeon 8500DV, but I haven't installed the drivers for it yet, so the drivers i'm using are provided by microsoft....I emailed ATI last night and requested up-to-date drivers (since the video card is discontinued), but it just seems to me that if you provide a driver for hardware that the driver you wrote would be compatible with the operating system that you design.... 
Click to expand...

All the ATI cards use a unified driver. Just go to ATI's site and download the catalyst 4.9 driver. Install the mobo drivers first, if you haven't already.

For the restart thing, right click my computer > properties > advanced > startup and recovery > settings. Uncheck the auto restart thing. Now instead of a restart, you should get a BSoD with info about the stop.
 
ummm....I found what you're talking about, and auto restart is not checked.....so why am I getting restarts? 
 
These restarts are getting worse...Microsoft keeps telling me that it's ATI's problem, even though it's windows that is messing up...
 
Well, I removed my processor today and redid the thermal compound, and it seems to be running pretty stable now...thanks again to microsoft for providing a fake/wrong cause of error.
 
Originally posted by: kcbass
Well, I removed my processor today and redid the thermal compound, and it seems to be running pretty stable now...thanks again to microsoft for providing a fake/wrong cause of error.
Click to expand...

in microsoft's defense, i am sure they cannot figure out when your CPU is running too hot.

but glad you think you've found the culprit, usually the PC just locks up without reboot.

if the reboots restart, try either PS or memory swap.
 
I just don't understand the whole microsoft error report....i mean, it's a good idea, and it's normally dead on. I don't expect them to monitor my hardware for me, but I don't think they should blame ATI when they can't figure out what's wrong.
 
true, but I still say the majority of the nonsense is coming from microsoft. On my error reports page that I was tracking, I had about 30 error reports. Three of them said resolution found, and when I clicked on that, it said "microsoft is unable (in my opinion, unwilling...) to resolve this issue. Contact ati customer support". You can't tell me you've resolved something unless you've resolved it. It's like working with the friggin DMV... 
 
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