Guest ironman556 Posted March 6, 2003 Report Share Posted March 6, 2003 Hi, I posted a while ago about power supplies, and decided to buy a 550W from someone I know, as he wanted a silent one, so there was one going cheap.I currently have a 250W which I think is causing problems with my new GeForce 4Ti. I've not got my hands on the new supply yet, but have today been told by another relative that they had problems with alarms going off when they installed a higher power supply.I have a Gigabyte 6BXE mainboard running a PIII 500MHz, 128 + 256MB SD Ram, 2HDD, 2CD ROM.The mainboard manual says the max current it'll take is 20A at 5.0V, and will operate between 4.9V and 5.2V.Do all the ATX power connectors give out a standard voltage/current, or does it increase as the power rating of the supply increases? And if it's not standard, will it be likely to fry my computer? (I thought a higher rated power supply would just be able to run more components)Thanks, Ironman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark2 Posted March 6, 2003 Report Share Posted March 6, 2003 Ironman as I understand it it just increase the power, the voltage will stay the same, but Paul is more the hardware expert hereThe current only increases when required by extra components Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ironman556 Posted March 10, 2003 Report Share Posted March 10, 2003 Thanks, that's what I thought, but it's better to ask around before plugging things in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Posted March 10, 2003 Report Share Posted March 10, 2003 As Mark has said - The voltages of an ATX PSU are standard, 12V, 5V and 3.3V.What changes with a higher wattage PSU is the amount of current/wattage it can supply, i.e. if you have hardware that needs 250 watts to run then a 250W PSU will just cope but will be stretched to its limit, but if you install a 550W PSU then it will easly cope with the demand but in both instances the voltages are the same.Any help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ironman556 Posted March 17, 2003 Report Share Posted March 17, 2003 Thanks, yes it was, I've now got my new 550W PSU in, but it's only made the problem of my graphics blacking out/pc rebooting worse. :'( It got so that the PC was almost unuseable, I've had to put my old card back in just to be able to post this thread without it crashing.Thanks for the info anyway, Ironman.(*Ironman goes off to sulk & see what he can find out about problem*) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ranger Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 How is the cooling on your card and case? I have seen overheating causing the same sort of problems you are having Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ironman556 Posted March 21, 2003 Report Share Posted March 21, 2003 My graphics card has a flashy heatsink and fan on it, I have a twin fan power supply, but thinking of getting a fan for the front of the case as my hard disks seem to be getting quite warm now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ellas Posted March 21, 2003 Report Share Posted March 21, 2003 still dont understand how your graphics are worse,of course you can get a fan that goes in a pci slot to cool down your card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ironman556 Posted May 16, 2003 Report Share Posted May 16, 2003 Ok, sorry it took so long to reply, I've been busy (A levels). I Finally had to revert to my old graphics card and my GF4 sitting in it's box in the cupboard. I stuck it in someone else's PC at Easter and the card ran perfectly. I put their Radeon in my PC, and it went into what looked like standby, and refused to come out of it, even with the reset button.It seems that my poor mobo doesn't like high performance cards. The only reason I can think of that the increase in power is a problem is that the card draws more current than the mobo can handle (as suggested by my local PC shop) because now it can supply as much power as the card wants, whereas before it was limited by my little power supply.The story has a happy(ish) ending, Anyweb PC's (www.anywebpcs.com) took the card back :-), and I'm now looking to build a new PC. Thanks for all your help.Ironman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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