OK Tech Heads

Its humbling for me to ask others this question, as I consider myself a “guru”, but I need to anyways:

I have this older PC that I built a couple of years ago that I still use as a second machine. Not a bad machine but I had some issues with corrupt USB ports and possibly a corrupt PCI slot or two. Anyways, a couple of months ago I decided to fix the issue once and for all with a new motherboard and a upgraded CPU while I was at it.

Well, I finally got to actually make the swap yesterday. I got everything all put together and plugged in. But when I powered it up nothing happened. I went over my wiring again and still nothing. So I unplugged everything except the motherboard power and turned it on again, worked fine. So then I tried it with the drives. Still OK. But the moment I try to plug my monitor into the vid card OR plug the fans in, it goes. After making sure the mobo doesn’t have some sort of weird requirements, I have decided it must be the power requirement.

Another thing that makes me believe this, and it makes sense to me now, a while back I tried to add another stick of memory to this PC and had shut down issues as well. I think the power supply was on the very edge of providing enough power. Maybe this new motherboard, and certainly the CPU, draw enough power to exceed what the 300w supply can provide?

Anyways, I ordered a new 400w PS today and hope that’s it. Ill post the current stats below. Let me know if you think I am right on with the PS.

Athlon XP 2200+ (new item, was a 1700)
Soltek MainBoard mobo (new item, was Abit KR7A mobo)
AGP Geforce 4200 Titanium, 128DDR
768mb DDR Ram
Creative 512 Sound card
80 Gig 7200rpm drive
8 Gig 5400rpm drive
300w PS (400w coming)

It must be the PS, I just know it!! Let me know your thoughts, thanks!

Try this Power Supply Calculator. It may be a bit off on some numbers, but it should still come pretty close. I calculated your comp, with what I figured it might be, and added in some fans and optical drives, and it comes to over 300w.

300w is the minimum that should be used for computers nowadays. The 400w should do the trick, if that is infact the problem.

Thanks Dream. I talked my issue up on another site and it seems unanimous that its a power issue. Thanks again

Yeah, It should be the the power generator..minimum 350W! Who imposed this device to you?

Its an old Antec server case, the 300 watt came with it.