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New power supply for ECS K7S5A...opinions wanted please...

T

TheNewGuy

Senior member
First off, I live in Canada, and would like to buy locally so that if a new power supply is not a solution to my problem, I can return the power supply.

I haven't been able to put two sticks of pc 133 SDRAM (one micron, one crucial, both 256, and they worked together in a previous system) into my computer (ECS K7S5A motherboard) without having the computer crash, and I believe it's my power supply. I'm running this with a 1.4 ghz AMD processor, 10 gig HD, Geforce 3 video card, TB Santa Cruz sound card, and DVD player. After some research my 300w generic power supply is only rated for 20A on the +3.3v rail. I did the chipset heatsink mod, and it didn't make any difference to resolve this problem. Oh yeah, I'm running win 98se, and adjusted the cache when I put the second chip in.

As a result, and because of where I live, I'm limited to two choices. The first one is the
350w Sparkle FSP350-60BN for $75 (OEM) or the Topower 370w ATX12V-TOP-420P4 (PII) for for $90 (retail). Please remember that these are Canadian prices. The one thing that concerns me with the "load regulation" on the Sparkle is that it's listed at +/- 4%.

Opinions are greatly appreciated and I'd like to pick up one of these power supplies today....

Thanks in advance...

Dave

 
personally i would pick the sparkle

it will provide more then enough juice for everything you need, even on that board.
 
Both powersupplies have a +5v and +3.3v combined of 220w, so they're comparable. The Top power one looks like it has 2 fans and a 12v connector for the p4 motherboards, not sure if the sparkle one does. Other than that they should both be fine, pay a little extra for an extra fan and a 12v p4 connector, in case you upgrade in the future, if you want to.

Also, the "line regulation" on the Topower is +/-5%, not sure if its the same as load regulation, but sounds like it's similar, so I wouldn't worry about that part.

My TTGI 350watt is rated at 220w combined output on +5v and +3.3v too, and it works great on a ECS k7s5a w/1.4 tbird.

Looks like those prices are pretty good for canadian too

Good Luck!
 
I would lean towards the Sparkle psu as well cause it's rated very highly. It's a better price and I don't see you having any problems at all with it.
 
I have not had a chance to work with the topower, but I have used several sparkle's over the years. Considering the sparkle is 15CN cheaper, that makes the decision even easier.
 
After looking at the specs of both I would lean towards the Topower,I do like the extra fan ,both are AMD approved so you can`t really go wrong with either.

🙂
 
You say you adjusted the cache when you put the second stick in. Do you mean the Vcache? If so, why? Win98 runs just fine with 512MB memory without modifying the vcache. If this is the case, undo whatever you did to the 'cache' and try with both sticks again.

I understand that this motherboard is picky about powersupplies and that may be your problem. The fact remains that it sounds like you made an unnecessary system modification and you may be about to spend $ that might not be necessary.
 
Well, I changed the ps to the Topower one, and the ram problem went away (so far), and the system has been running stable for more than 5 hours. Before I wouldn't get more than 15 mins.....thanks for all your input folks...

Dave
 
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