To all experiencing computer freezes and lock up's!

aMo · Post by **aMo** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 4:28 am

I read an article on a computer web-site recently, regarding a powersupply test.
The tester had run a series of test to determine how much a powersupply could deliver before it reached max capacity.
He found that an Enermax PSU rated at 550W could only deliver 423W continuosly, and at that time the computer would lock up due to the fact that the 5V current in the system dropped to 4.6V, and that the mainboard would not accept such a powerloss.

This made me think, there are many CW users that complain about lock-up's, and I could imagine that if you run 2 (or more) 7200rpm harddisk's (or even faster ones), a heavy graphics adapter, and many other periphals that require a lot of power plus a powerpulsar or several smaller cards, this would consume large amounts of electricity from your PSU, and at some point could cause some current to drop below acceptable levels for a brief amount of time, causing a lock-up...
Especially if you have a small PSU...

My point is; Check your Power Supply Unit!
Make sure that it can deliver more than you need, and that it is of good quality.

I now actually believe that there are many users who have complained much about CW-software causing lock-up's when it actually has been the PSU not beeing able to deliver the amount of power needed and the mobo shutting down...

Post by **hubird** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:01 am

Concerning the build in supply my mac computer manual says the 5 PCI slots together may demand 75 Watt max, the AGP slot alone (if changing the card) max 20 Watt.
edit: The supply says 344 Watt max.

_________________
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[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2003-04-16 09:02 ]

[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2003-04-16 09:11 ]

aMo · Post by **aMo** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:10 am

mhm.. My old PSU was 215W, so you could imagine it trying to run 95W only on the AGP & PCI, it would only be 120W left for the rest of my system, and that wouldn't even be 100% usable since the rated power of a PSU is rated by peaks and not by continous power...

And the mobo itself probably uses some of that effect too when trancferring hundreds of mb's over the PCI-bus and back and forth from the memory..

AMD themselves even says that if you run an Athlon XP 1700+ you should have at least a 230W PSU (thats why I changed), so you can imagine that the cpu alone uses some power...

[ This Message was edited by: aMo on 2003-04-16 09:11 ]

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:14 am

Like other components, the quality of your power supply does make a difference for reliability. It is sometimes better to spend a few extra bucks for a good quality power supply.