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What are the risk of running a Low watt Power Supply?

L

Lonny007

Member
Noticed I have only a 145 watt power supply in my Acer Aspire 6120 with a pent 3 500, 256Ram, Voodoo5 AGP, Sound Blaster Live Value, 40gig maxtor HD,Kenwood 72X, Philips 8x4x32 CDRW, 1.4mb floppy drive.

Also USB KEYBOARD, USB MOUSE, USB SCANNER, USB JOYSTICK, USB ZIP DRIVE, USB CAMERA.

I am I putting a strain on my components by doing this?My computer seems to run fine and stable, passes 12 hours looping 3dMax benchmark 2000. I play allot of flight simulators and games online and have not noticed any lockups, crashes or reboots. Reason I am asking a electrician friend said I could fry components this way? This did not make much since, so what is your opinion?
Thanks
 
You can't fry components this way. The worst thing that could happen to you is that the system becomes unstable because certain components (think memory) don't get enough juice to function properly. The result is an BSOD.

If this system runs stable, you've a very good PSU. There's nothing against upgrading to a 250 or 300 Watt PSU, though.
 
I concur with the above opinion. It all depends on what the requirements of your components are (amperage). If the power supply is able to supply the amount of current needed by your components, then the system will run fine. The reason some computers need higher wattage PS is to supply enough current on specific voltages.

On a PS, you have different voltages and if the components are going to draw more current than is able to be supplied by the PS on that voltage, then you would either get a BSOD, unstable, or the power supply would just quit/overheat.

The only thing I can think that you could fry is the PS. Drawing too much out of a power supply will I think overheat it and cause it to fail.


 
If you have an weak power supply you'll usually experience glitches such as random crashes, corrupted data and booting problems.

If you haven't seen any of these after extensive testing, it means your PS is big enough to handle your system.
 
Hmmm...

I would think that you could wreck a CD drive or hard drive.

Reason: PS can't supply enough current, voltage drops and can't quite spin up the drives the way that it should, drives eventually burn out. Kind of like a brown out inside the computer.

But, I assume that BSOD and other stability problems would happen first. I have been thinking about this same thing because I have a 300W PS and am considering an Athlon 1400.

Jeremy806

 
The power supply can be damaged, but almost always its current limiting will kick in and shut it down first (direct shorts are another matter).

The only way to tell if your supply is being overloaded is to measure the output voltages and verify that everything from 0-5V is within 3% of specs, +12V within 6%, and the negative voltages within 10%.
 
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