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Is my power supply adequate?

Q

QuiltingB

Member
This thing came with a 200W power supply to power the following:
6 GB HD
Floppy
CD-rom
win modem
64 MB ram

I just added a 30GB 7200 rpm HD, another 64 MB ram, and plan to add an internal IDE CD-RW soon.
There are NO other PCI slots filled other than the modem.
I sometimes plug a microsoft game pad into the game port in front, and have a scanner USB, but it of course has its own power, as does the parallel port printer.

I know that it's not optimal, but is 200W adequate to supply my 3 new upgrades? This thing is a compaq and I don't know if I could reasonable upgrade the power supply. In any case, I certainly do not want to do so.
 
The memory is not "much" of an issue - they tend to use a relatively small amount of 3.3V amperage, so that should be fine.

The HD and the CDRW might become a problem as soon as many devices are used. Thankfully, you're not using many PCI-slots, there's usually quite a draw from there. As long as not too many devices try to do too many things at the same time (i.e.: CDRW reads, both HD's write like mad & so on), you MIGHT be ok.

Personally, I would vouch for going up a notch with the PSU - 250W or preferrably more (more is always better 🙂.

See how the system behaves. If you put the I/O under heavy load and the system strats to give you BSOD's or unexpected reboots (that's a definite giveaway), you might have to opt for a bigger PSU. It depends on what you do. If most of what you do is word-processing & the likes (i.e.: not "normally" heavy I/O dependant things like gaming, rendering & things of such ilk), you should be fine.

What is it you do normally? If you just use your system as a "glorified typewriter" with added storage capabilities & the odd gaming session you ought to be fine. 😀

Hope this helps.
 
Definately get a new 300Watt power supply. You do not mention what CPU you are using (the newer AMD & P4 CPU's tend to draw a lot of power)

PS: Dont upgrade to a 250Watt go for 300W and above, itll save you money & hassels in the long run.
 
Well, my brother tells me these newer Compcraps SUCK. He does authorized repair, about 50-60 machines daily. That PS is WAY inadequate. You need a min of 300w for most newer systems. He's always complaining about them not having enough power.
 
The processor is a Celeron, 466/66. I use the thing for surfing the net, playing with graphics, some word processing, designing my web pages, programming, and the kiddos use it for games like Midtown madness, chess, fighter pilot simulation, all sorts of stuff. But when they play games, that is all that is going on at the time.
I suppose that I just need to see if the thing gives me problems when I get the cd-rw in.
I am very disappointed with compaq. I thought that if they sold me a unit with 2 extra 5" bays, an extra 3" bay, and 3 extra card slots, 4 usb ports and a game port, that the clowns would have had enough sense to put a little extra power in the box!
Will the CD-rw just pull juice when I am burning a cd? or does it take juice all of the time? I plan to burn from my 2nd HD, not the cd-rom, so neither the cd-rom nor the modem card would be pulling juice - am I thinking correctly? Its crummy that I have to try to ballance my power usage!
 
Well then, I guess you've learned about name brand systems. Here's what I think: Buy Name Brand?.

The drives only use power when active, BTW. When you get to a point where there's not enough power, the system will likely just reboot itself or freeze. Keep your finger crossed!

Good Luck! 🙂
 
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