What are the signs that you are overloading your power supply?

[beer]

What are the signs that you are drawing too much current from a power supply?

I have a Thunderbird 700 that I just put into my system that is powered by an Antec 250w. Now, I can't play any games - they lock up. But I have a well-ventilated Addtronics case, a VOS32 with artic silver (Slot A) and a Microstar K7 Pro - pretty top-of-the-line components (tbird will go up to 900 supposidly...I will ramp up the clock speeds when I figure why I'm not stable now). I can run RC5 for hours and not lock up - so I know that CPU overheating is not an issue. My video card is Winfast Geforce DDR - in addition to stock cooling there's a slot cooler next to it and a 92mm fan ducted to it - so I know that's not locking up.

I just want to know what I could do to test this power supply to see if it is the issue - I already ordered an Enermax, and I have no other power supplies that are >250w that I can test with. Is there any way I can find out?

 

[A5]

Sounds like an over loaded PS to me...try taking some things out and see what happens. That GeForce is one power-hungry beast isn't it?🙂

 

[beer]

Ummm..well...there are kinda few more things on the power supply:

Let's see...we got the gas-guzzling 700 MHz Tbird, a Maxtor 7200 RPM hard drive, two optical drives, four PCI cards - two NICs, video capture card, and sound card, plus my geforce, in addition to my cooling which is 2x120mm fans, 3x60mm fans (including CPU coolers), an 80mm in a hanging bracket, a slot cooler, a 40cfm hard drive cooler, a 2cool PC...plus maxed out I/O ports - including a palmpilot cradle and my APC.


The wattage total I figured around 200....

 

[JackMDS]

PC Power Supplies (PS) has Voltage regulator on all line, a big overload usually shut off the PS. Small load can lower voltage a little without shutting it off. In case of O/C small reduction of voltages can lower the stability of the system. One way to detect it is to use a program, like Mother Board Monitor(MBM418, if it available for your Mobo). MBM has a capacity to log the Voltage reading every few second, unstable PS will show big variation in this reading.

 

[beer]

Well all my voltages are well within range.
What I am worrying about is whether I am exceeding the maximum current outputted. The voltages can be within range but if I draw too many amps from it, will it lock up, or what?

 

[Nobuo]

Doubt this will help much, but I'm having pretty much the same problem. My rig: 700 mhz T-Bird, Asus K7M, 128 megs generic PC100, Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 (7200 rpm), Leadtek Winfast GTS, and still using an old 230 watt PS. My computer is perfectly stable for hours on end running almost everything (Diablo 2, Rainbow Six, SimCity 3000 for games; and everyday stuff like IE5, ICQ, etc). However, when I try to run Half Life (the only really hardware-intensive game I play), it locks up on me within the first few minutes of play. Drivers have already been ruled out as the issue, tried several different revisions... I have noticed though, that if I use Direct3D instead of OpenGL as the renderer (thus slowing my framerate a bit), I can actually get an hour or two of stability in Half Life before it locks up, rather than a few minutes.

 

[JackMDS]

Voltage and Current are related.

W=I x V i.e. Power (Wattage)= Current(amps.) x Volts.

If your system draw too much current, the voltage regulator will not work, so either the system will shut off, or you will have big fluctuation in Voltages.

As a demo. If we have only 12V.

Power Supply of 240W is capable to: 12Volts x 20Amp.=240W , i.e. a PS of 240W that provides 12V can deliver only 20A. If you draw more then 20A, either it shut off or the volt goes down.

 

[JackMDS]

Or take a look Here