Hopefully someone can help me with a problem I am having. I purchased a new computer with the following specs a few months ago: - MSI 745 Ultra Mainboard - AMD XP 2200+ CPU - 512 MB DDRAM I believe I got a 300 watt power supply in the case (will double check this soon). Anyway the computer has been running fine all these months till recently when my hard drive died. I thought well it might have just been old so I replaced it with another one and did a reformat. Well less then a week later this one has also started to crash my system. The problem is that when I try to play games or even boot windows it just hangs and the hard drive can be heard making loud powering up and down noises. This has got me thinking that the PSU is going/gone bad and needs replacing. Is a 300watt enough for a AMD XP 2200+, 512MB DDRAM, GF4, CD-Rom, burner, floppy, 1 hard drive and a couple of network cards and SCSI card? I had to underclock my pc to a 1500 now to make it stable and able to run windows. The temp is about 36 for CPU and about 28 for system. The voltage is the thing I have noticed slowly getting worse since I bought the PC. Vcore = 1.62 3.3V = 3.30 +5V = 4.30 +12V = 10.32 Well the last 2 seem really low compared to when I bought the PC and the CPU fan has dropped 300RPM from 4800+ to 4500 now. Is this all because the power supply isn’t enough and should I buy a new one, 420 watt or so? Or could there be another problem? Please help! Thanks in advance!

Yes, the PSU is able to handle what you are throwing at it but if you have loosing hard drives at the rate you are you might have a bigger problem. The PSU could have issues but if it was you most likely would have other issues as well. Such as random lock ups, etc. You could have a bad IDE ribbon cable or a bum IDE port. You might for grins, want to switch around the cables so the HDD is on the secondary port and the others on the primary port and see if the problem continues. You also might try different molex connectors. Molex connectors are the plugs that power your devices. Just some simple thoughts but things to try. KTTD

Thanks for the advice. I have tried a few other things. I un-plugged the cd-rom, burner, and floppy drive so that I would only have the 1 harddrive plugged in (IDE1) and also replaced the cables and swapped power connections. Other stuff still in is the GF4 and network cards + scsi. Still the same issues when running at 2200+ as it locks up at random times, either trying to play games or when u boot to windows. also power cutting sounds on the harddrive. at 1500 the PC seems to run fine. the temps are the same and voltages the same no matter what speed I run it at. I'm really out of ideas. I tried everything I could. Bios is up-to-date and all drivers are up-to-date and even clean installs don't seem to help. :( I don't see why it can handle running at 1500+ but not at 2200+... its the same temps and all so I don't know what to think...

At this time, I would replace the PSU with a new one and see if the problems go away. It does sound like you might have a bad PSU but one won't be sure till you replace it. So I would take that step and if problems still persist, get back to us. Thanks for posting more information. KTTD

yeah i really think its the PSU now. I tried a AOpen CD-ROM (another one i had) in this PC and it wouldn't even open up the tray. lol. it detects it but the tray doesn't open and theres no power going to it. I put it in a old PC (pentium II) and its only got a 230w power and the CD-Rom works fine. So think I will purchase a new PSU asap.

The 12v rating is too low which can cause dmaage similar to being overpowered. Get a high quality 300/350/400w power supply and make sure you have good air circulation in your case. Hope this helps.

I replaced it and all is well now :)