Symptoms of an underpowered PC?

[Spankthru]

I have a 300 watt Enlight 7237 cas/psu combo and am getting random shutdowns/restarts:

My components: (none oc'ed)

Abit KT7A
1400 Mhz Tbird
16X DVD
40X CDRW
80GB 7200rpm HD
GF3 Ti200
5 port 2.0 USB PCI card
NIC
Modem
Acoustic Edge
Leadtek TV/FM
4x 80mm Case fans

 

[SladeZero]

Hey there,

Well I would say you are on the verge of not getting the power you need. I had an Enlight 250 Watt PSU
but I was very close to it's max. You NEVER GET THE FULL 250 or 300 Watts since some of that power
is lost in the form of heat. I think my 250 was maxed out at about 210 I think. When I figured out about how much
I was using it was about 200 watts. If you have ever tried to squeeze an orange for orange juice when it was just
about dry you would notice it's really hard. That applies here. If you are near the edge of your power cap, then the
Comp is going to have to work harder to get that little bit of extra power out of it.
Seeing as how you have a T-Bird, GF3 TI and CD-RW I would suggest at least a 400 Watt PSU. CD-RWs use alot
of power too. T-Birds use more then XPs hence the reason XPs generally run cooler (AT STOCK SPEED THAT IS 🙂 ).
Check the max rating on your PSU to see what its max watts are. Also, case fans will take it out of your PSU too
if you have a few. Just about everything you have there says, FEED ME MORE 😛.

Hope that helps

SladeZero

 

[amdskip]

random shutdowns/restarts

That is a very good symptom there. At first glance I thought your computer would be fine with that power supply but you are running 4 case fans, tv tuner card, usb card, etc and these could put you just over the stable edge.