Power Supply Improves System Performence

Some of you may already know this through experience, but sometimes you stumble into something as a computer tech you did not intend. While working on a clients computer I found I needed to replace the power supply, it was fried. This machine had 3 hard drives 1 CD Rom running inside so I recommended that we get a larger power supply than that 200 watt power supply this particular case came with. I order a 350 watt power supply, put it in this machine and by adding 150 watts of power it had a suprising side effect, the machine ran a load faster than before. Now the only reason I know it ran faster is becuase I have worked on this machine before. Even with 1 gig of ram and a 256 meg graphics card it was always sluggish even with only 4 total tsr's loaded. My best guess is, the computer was so grossly under powered that it was effecting how efficient t he system was. In the future if you find a system that you have or your working on and all other avanues have been explored to speed up the system and it still has no effect, see how many devices the system is supporing and than check the wattage on the power supply. A power supply upgrade may do the trick!

The Slack Man

 

The PSU, IMO, is the single most important piece of hardware.

Faulty PSU's account for the majority of all PC problems

Many PSU manufactures fluff thier rating's, avoid generic no name brands.
There are a few big names I would avoid too

 

The funny thing is I ahve replaced proably 150 power supplies and have never seen the performance enhancement that this gave. But your are correct on the PSU but youjust never put much thought into it until you see how much of a diffence it makes. Rarley have I had the need to think about it I just knew 200 watts was not near enough to run all he was attemting to do

Thanks for the confirmation reply,

The Slack Man

 

Wow I hope I see gains like that, I just bought the OCZ 520watt that was listed on here. Im going from a Antec 400watt. The video card I have (X1900XTX) calls for minimum of 350 watt, So I figured 400 is kind of close with everything else.

 

One should buy the largest psu they can afford. don't skimp. it'll bite you back. random errors/crashes. Also, it will delay the next psu upgrade.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/powercalc.jsp

Another important part I think is a UPS. APC is a good brand. I can't understand some would plug a $2000 rig in a $5 power suppressor.

 

Wow, 200W. I'm surprised it even booted! Ya a UPS is great up here where I live as the power goes out quite often, not for long mind you, just enough to shut the PC down and maybe up to 15 minutes %99 of the time. The only thing I have to do is shut the alarm off.