Ok, P4 2.8 1g dual, 450 dual fan psu, 3 case fans, one cathode light (yes I'm lame) ati aiw 9800 pro, sb aud, cd writer, dvd writer, twin WD 160 on a raid 0 and a 40g maxtor as secondary ide. Well, actually it was two case fans to start, but here's what happened: Bought some new junk, 3 case fans and a grill, replaced the prev 2 fans (so added 1 more), but it all together, booted xp, tried to do the new updates fo xp that just came out, took forever (figured many were dl'ing from ms), then it paused and the it would freeze for 10 secs, then unfreeze, then freeze again. Could not shut down, would not respond. Risked the manual shut down ( I know raid 0 is very touchywith this) and when I rebooted, raid controller reported the array was broken, one drive failed. After flipping out ( :P ) I tried rebooting several times, same result. Turned the comp off, thinking my 450 psu was possibly overloaded (well not thinking, more like praying as I had tons on my raid 0), disconnected all fans and frills, same reuslt, failure in raid. After this, firmly checked all connections to both twin drives, nothing seemed to be loose, rebooted, and teh raid 0 was then in tact, and runnning fine for about 5 hours now. Reconnected all the frills, no problems, did a full disk scan, fine, now doign a full virus scan (norton, pc cillin, TDS, ad aware), did the updates fine.... What do you think caused this? I know most will assume when secured the connectors that one was probably loose, but I can't stress enough that they were all very firmly secured, and didn't budge when I did this, that's why I'm not sure if this will continue to be stable. Could my psu possibly be overloaded?? I think 450 should be plenty for what I have, even though I do have a lot. Please let me know what you think.

Probably. 450 would be fine, depending on the power supply. If it is low quality, it may not actually handle what it says. It also may not provide the power needed to each rail. It was probably something quirky with the raid or some other connection you thought was securebit might not have been.

I've been preaching this a lot lately, especially since I ran into similar problems myself. Wattage isn't the only factor when choosing a PSU...you have to look at the specs & how the amps are distributed over the rails. The +12v rail has become quite important these days...the fans, HDDs, CD/DVD drives, motherboard, etc all pull power from +12v...& you have a LOT of stuff! Check the specs...they should be listed on the side of the PSU. If the amps on the +12v are in the mid teens, I'd suspect that's the problem. Get a PSU with roughly 25 amps on the +12v http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/power_supply/default.asp http://www.sysopt.com/articles/PSU_Perspectives/index.html http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=techotherhardware&Number=1966521&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=1 http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/