how unreasonable is it....

P

Projkt4

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 7, 2002
Messages
119
to expect a 235w powersupply to power eight hard drives plus the motherboard? I am running a generic hard drive i dumpstered and its doing allright if i leave it only running one hard drive. The reason i ask is because i was able to run all eight hard drives a couple of nights ago. Then i walked away for a while and i was getting no display and my proc was scalding to the touch. now i am able to get these combinations to work:

Mobo+1ram+video card+1hard drive
Mobo+1ram+video card+1hard drive+Nic
Mobo+1ram+video card+1hard drive+Nic+IDEcontroller

that was the last good hardware configuration. after this point i added another hard drive and i get no video. on a whim i decided to try a different power jack from the power supply. then it worked! what is going on??

as a side note its hot as *that place that im going* here, and humid too.
(i dont know the forum rules on swearing)

any help?
 
Heh I don't think a 235w psu is reasonable enough to power anything but a PC-XT these days! In these days of hot power-hungry processors and video cards, 300W is an absolute minimum, and even that is stretching it. For the longest time a new PSU was considered a long-term investment, but now it seems new power requirements are ever more frequent, as is the need to upgrade them due to the introduction of new power connectors and such. Just like LCD response times, I would take wattage with a grain of salt, because premium supplies can be stable a lot higher than other lesser quality ones of the same rating. But as a rule of thumb, give your PSU some breathing room, you don't want to drive your psu to the max rating (just like your car wouldnt last too long if it was always driven at its top speed), and sometimes they are stressed beyond what they should be even with no visible signs of instability...and with the results you are describing, you are definitely putting all of your components at risk. Unstable current, just like static electricity, can do its damage over a longer period of time before you discover it's too late to stop your peripherals from going under, that is if it doesn't fry everything in the first place. Upgrade to the highest wattage you can find as soon as possible, preferably a 430W or higher. I don't know what kind of system it is, but I doubt it's a 386, so unless it's a dinosaur, and if you plan on having a system that you'd consider anywhere close to cutting edge in the near future, possibly even the one you have now, better get a really good,strong supply, and be somewhat future-proofed as well. But in these circumstances, even a 300W name brand PSU would be better than what you have now! You could get an antec for $50-60, possibly even cheaper, a pittance compared to what it would cost to replace your whole system!
 
It also depends on the quality of the 235W power supply unit. Most 235W power supply units that come with cases tend to be of the cheap, "generic" variety, which often delivers fewer than 150 true watts. That will be barely enough to power a previous-generation PIII-based Celeron CPU with a single 5400rpm hard drive, 256MB of RAM and integrated Intel 810 chipset-based graphics.
 
Thanks for all the insight,. Synful; you basically told me what i knew but didn't want to admit to. oh well, I guess it was inevitable that i was going to start having to pay for parts again. I might as well just get a new case for it too. the old omnitech cases have a total of 1 fan. and not really enough drive bays for what i need. all in all i agree it is best to be safe-broke, then sorry-in debt....

Thanks all.
 
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