Will a UPS help if the powersupply is inadequate?

[winterlude]

I'm about to upgrade one of my systems that currently has a 250w power supply. It's running a 466 cleron and i figure that I'll upgrade it to a 750 PIII, add a 7200rpm harddrive (to replace two smaller ones), replace a defective CD-ROM with a DVD, and add a plextor burner. Also, I'll replace the RAGE pro turbo card with an AIW radeon 8500DV when it comes out and bump up the SDram to 512megs from 224. I plan on building a new system in 12-16 months from now based on clawhammer, so this is just a short-term upgrade.


I haven't had any power problems with my system as it currently is as far as I can tell, but I'm wondering if a UPS will supplement any dips in power or inadequacies of the powersupply should they occur. I don't have a UPS for that system, so I figure I could kill two birds with one stone if the answer is yes. I'll likely get a 300w ps soon anyway, but I'm still curious to know the answer.

Thanks in advance
Winterlude

 

[WhoDeeny]

No and its not worth risking it either

 

[Workin']

A UPS will not compensate for a weak power supply. Would an extra gas tank make your car more powerful?

You'll probably be fine with the 250W supply and a P3. I was running a P3-750, 384MB RAM, 4 hard drives, a RAID card, a SCSI card, a TNT, DVD, CDRW, internal zip drive, sound card, and modem off a Powerman 230W with no problems whatsoever. Ran fine like that for over 3 years (well, the first 2 years were with a Celeron 300 OC'd to 464).

 

[winterlude]

Does anybody know of a rule of thumb regarding how much power you need? I supposed that there is a way to figure it out by adding the wattage of each component, but there must be some general guidlines out there, right?

 

[dvander64]

Hi there, I had a similar question before and found a great answer. Someone posted a great excel program a while back that does all the calculations for you. You can try to do a search for it, or if you pm me i might be able to dig it up from my hd. Good luck.