Not enough power?

My computer needs help. Specs:
Sempron 2500+ (1.8ghz)
Asus A7V-600X motherboard (onboard lan, sound)
512mb DDR400
40gb, 120gb hard drives
350W generic PSU

Its very tempremental. Last night I tried booting and it wouldnt boot until I changed which slot the ram was in. If I plug in a case fan, its unlikely to boot successfully (it makes the powerup noises, clicks, makes the powerup noises over and over). To get it to reliably boot, I've had to underclock the cpu to 1.4. Is 350W enough for those specs? The guy at the shop said no, however, it ran with those specs for a week before the problem started, and the ram thing doesnt make sense to me. I had the mobo sent back under warranty, apparently theres nothing wrong with it.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Try it with a 380W or 450W PSU. It should immediately solve the problem if that is the problem.

The booting problem with the RAM may have been because the RAM
card wasn't sitting properly, or there was something obstructing the
slot like dust or hair. Try clearing it out and trying again.

It's not the power being low, but it could be faulty. One thing I've always recommended is at the least, shell out a little more for a known brand powersupply (Enlight, Antec if you like spending more)

350W is more then enough to run that, unless you just got a new huge video card or something as such. (300W is enough, actually)

Don't listen to people at hardware stores, most times, even if they know it's enough they'll say it isn't to get you to buy something.

There's a chance the ram got damaged. Or, what Frag said.

Sempron: 1.6V, 62W
Board: 12V, can't find the current requirement.
RAM: 2.5V This is the standard for DDR, which is lower then SDRAM, which is 3.3V ... just found that out.
Video Card: ?
HDD: 8.60W x 2 = 17.2W (this is a guess, based on WD Caviar power requirments)

The power of the things hooked into the board don't matter, since the board requires a certain amount. Unless they have seperate power sources (newer video cards, HDD, DVD ... Fans)

So, yeah ... check the power supply on another system. And try swapping out the ram.

Also, Frag ... jesus, 450W? NO ONE needs that, unless they're running a server of some kind with many, fast spinning, drives. I think the only thing out there that requires at least 400W is the 7800GTX.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Also, Frag ... jesus, 450W? NO ONE needs that, unless
they're running a server of some kind with many, fast spinning, drives.
I think the only thing out there that requires at least 400W is the
7800GTX.

We don't get anything other than 300W, 350W, 380W or 450W here. That number just jumped out.

I'm running 350W because my PSU that was rated for 300W couldn't handle
a GF4MX and 2 HDDs. Generic power supplies are made very shoddily. The
ratings are just numbers that don't stand up in practice :sad: .

I'm not sure what you're saying here ... rating? (If you mean ... 300W and so on ... that's not a rating ...)

I can relate on poorly made powersupplies, though. Some, could, say they supply a certain amount of power, but some may be so ineffecient that there's a lot of power loss (poor wiring, loss in heat). So the output to the system isn't 300W, but it still consumes that amount from your home, or whatever power source.

But that's a guess.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Ahh, sorry, forgot vid card. Its a Radeon 9600pro.

The ram is new. I replaced my old ram, which is currently being used in another machine successfully.

I've heard a lot of bad things about generic power supplies, specifically, that the power fluctuates. I'll see if I can talk someone into letting me borrow theirs.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

if your computer is just powering up, then clicking, then powering up agin and clicking again, try unplugging the hard drive, because that's where it's failing. if it will boot up to windows XP setup from the CDROM drive realiable a few times in a row, you'll know that the clikcing that you heard is your hdd crashing.

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Yes, yet another possibility, but, honestly, it sounds like some power issue, since adding a fan will cause it to not boot. If this is constant, I can't tell, obviously.

Clicking, yikes, that would mean the heads are misaligned ... which basically means you have to pay big bucks to retrieve the data, since the discs can't be read. But, I don't think this is the case, because it sounds like the 'failure' is fairly random (in appearance). They could be slowing down though. That's pretty common.

But again. if it makes a 'power up sound' and keeps doing it ... if the screens come up and stay there (with a message along the lines of "insert bootable device" or something as such), then it could more likely be the HDD, otherwise, it probably is a power issue. Especially considering you have the board checked and it came back fine.

I think, we can assume, lack of power isn't the issue (unless the power supply is doing something funky).

Hey, Nickel, you should join me in my buisness. But none of that 50/50 bulls**t

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

The clicking doesnt sound like harddrives, it sounds like the fans are doing something weird (possibly PSU fan?). As far as I can tell, data is intact. No image comes up on the screen. Unplugging hard drives is also a bit weird. When I said it wouldnt boot until I'd moved the ram, I'd already tried unplugging both drives. Very odd, since the machine worked fine with the ram in that slot and both harddrives running just hours before.

I'm running on minimal hardware, no CD drives, no floppy drive, no case fan. The pattern seems to be, it will either do nothing except make strange noises and/or beep at me, or if an image comes up on the screen, it will successfully boot to OS, and if it goes 5 minutes without suddenly resetting, it will run fine all day.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Get a nice big fanned PSU, 450W, that way its really quiet and makes your whole computer freezing!

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

Yea definately sounds like power. If it was the HDDs then the CMOS would atleast boot.

A crappy 350W powersupply may be much worse than a good 300W. In fact,
during a lan once, a friend had a problem with his 400w powersupply and
borrowed my 300w, it all worked just fine.

One way to estimate wether a powersupply is "better" than another is to
compare their weight. A good powersupply usually weights noticably more
than a budget powersupply.

Crono said:
Hey, Nickel, you should join me in my buisness. But none of that 50/50 bulls**t

Hell, if you've got a business, you'll be splitting it 50/50 with Uncle Sam...

What business you got, anyway? I'm up for a change...

tell me where to send my resume (pronounced re-zoom)

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Yes, I know how to pronounce resum? .. oh that? yeah ... Alt + 130.

It's online, man. Having an actual place of business would be awesome and all ... but I don't want it to envelop my life. It's something I'll do on the side as a job, since I'm either under or overqualified for everything else.

Oh, it doesn't exist yet, I have a lot of work to do to get things straightened out first. But, it'd be computer related, that's for sure. Something, I think, would rival Alienware, simply because AW is overpriced ... and they've been using less then good products lately. I think the only place I've seen that is close to what I plan on making is NW-Falcon (I think that's the name) and like the others, they're way too expensive. There's only a few disadvantages I'll have compared to them: upfront pay (I don't have money to cover it) and uh ... no I think that's it. Maybe time.

But it would consist of articles as well. Which, wouldn't be winged as I do here, but actual articles, with spot on facts (not estimates, which is what I usually give).

I don't think I'd do benchmarks, since, I have some not so good opinions of them. (They're usually focusing on whatever would make the test seem more "important" and they require you to buy the products)

Now, if this actually took off and did well, there'd really be nothing stopping me in the money aspect. Hell, I could probably set up a payment plan even ... but, because that's inconvenient I'd have to charge a small percentage more (total)

Check out Northwest Falcon computers' site, and that huge list is s**t I already planned on doing a few years ago. I've just never had time to really flesh it all out ... not to mention, I'm on my own in this regard.

I think the biggest benefit of it all would be, you could live anywhere to "help". Go internet.

This is just a little note, does anyone elses plus signs get parsed into spaces when they use the spellchecker? I've noticed it a lot ... but not constantly.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Sorry for reviving the topic, but I have some news...

I got a 400W generic PSU, and everything seems to be running ok. CPU is back to 1833, havent had any strange behaviour.

(I know its still generic but it was free)

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher