Do newer PSU's work with older PC's

Gray Fox

Gray Fox

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Well do they. I hear conflicting advice so I want to ask the experts.
As far as I see the newer PSU's just have an extra sata connector, but the rest is the same, so it should be compatible with older pc parts.

For example thease
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171007
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171018
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371003

I need a case and a psu for my current PC.
It's 2.4 GHZ AMD 32bit
512mb ram
9800 pro

I was thinking of buying myself ( warning dutch site)
http://www.computerland.nl/ProductDetails.aspx?en=NS00433285
and
http://www.computerland.nl/ProductDetails.aspx?en=NS00454297

But this looks good too
http://www.computerland.nl/ProductDetails.aspx?en=NS00453293
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/pc_case2.php?idx=118

review
http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/silentiumt2/index.php?file=1

Thnx in advance for any help.
 
yes they will work ..I ran almost the same set up on a enermax 350w psu (cheap, you can find one for about $30 canadian)

also you can get by with an Enermax 350w psu, you dont need anything larger ..I had almost the exact setup and it powered my rig quite well ..in fact the 350w briefly powered my current rig: amd4200 x2, 2g ram, nvidia 7800gt, 120 g hd
 
Thank you very much.
I did have a 350 no name psu, but that crapped out 2 years ago, then I had an A-open psu for 2 years, but that crapped out not to long ago.
Now I have a 350 no-name which we bought for our p3 128 mb ram machine.
I gave my parents the a-open since it still provided power, only the fan did not work. Their pc doesn't need that much power so I thought it would be ok.

In any case, currently my pc keeps beeping when it's put under load, so that means the cooling is not allright. I thought by replacing the A-open with the broken fan it would be better. And it is a little, but still if I use Zbrush my pc regularly starts beeping.

Thats why the artic silentium sounds so good, the psu is way overpowered, but the reviews are good for the pc, and the psu seems decent.
In a few months I will buy a new pc hopefully and my parents will get this one, so I need to keep it in working condition for another 4 years at least.
 
I've had 2 power supplies in 5 years ..the 350w enermax is still working ..buy good name brands (Aopen may just be rebranded generic) ..I highly recommend Enermax, this one specifically for your needs:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817103455

although New Egg has it at $30 more expensive than it should be

if it's beeping it's sually not your power supply ..beeping usually means there's a fan not working on your mobo or cpu ..powers with power will manifest itself as crashing or crashing + the smell of burning
 
CptStern said:
yes they will work ..I ran almost the same set up on a enermax 350w psu (cheap, you can find one for about $30 canadian)

also you can get by with an Enermax 350w psu, you dont need anything larger ..I had almost the exact setup and it powered my rig quite well ..in fact the 350w briefly powered my current rig: amd4200 x2, 2g ram, nvidia 7800gt, 120 g hd
Click to expand...

I second that; they'll work. Just tie the SATA cables away and hide em till they come to be useful.

As long as you're not using massive power hungry V-cards I'll say max 500W would be plenty. 350w would have hard time powering something like Cpt stren's setup and your setup you probably need 400-500W PSU so to be on the safe side.

Both coolerMaster and Enermax make decent units.

Good Luck.
 
CptStern said:
I've had 2 power supplies in 5 years ..the 350w enermax is still working ..buy good name brands (Aopen may just be rebranded generic) ..I highly recommend Enermax, this one specifically for your needs:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817103455

although New Egg has it at $30 more expensive than it should be

if it's beeping it's sually not your power supply ..beeping usually means there's a fan not working on your mobo or cpu ..powers with power will manifest itself as crashing or crashing + the smell of burning
Click to expand...
I thought it was the PSU, because the fan was not working so I thought it wasn't able to draw enough air out.

I did open my pc when it was on and I saw my cpu fan was working, my casefan was working, my gpu fan was working, only the psu fan was not working.

And the air coming from the cpu fan was cool, and it was relatively cool at the side grills that conduct the heat from the cpu to the fan. I also cleaned out my fan and the grills recently.


But my gpu fan is harder to clean since the sound card is right below, and the air coming from that thing, even when it is idle is ****ing hot. Do you think my video card may be overheating and sending a signal to the mobo to beep? I thought only the cpu temperature was measured.
 
ya that could have been it then if your psu fan wasnt working ..btw did you check to see if your chipset fan was working? (the fan on the mobo)

get a can of compressed air; much easier to clean using a blast of air
 
Gray Fox said:
I thought it was the PSU, because the fan was not working so I thought it wasn't able to draw enough air out.

I did open my pc when it was on and I saw my cpu fan was working, my casefan was working, my gpu fan was working, only the psu fan was not working.

And the air coming from the cpu fan was cool, and it was relatively cool at the side grills that conduct the heat from the cpu to the fan. I also cleaned out my fan and the grills recently.


But my gpu fan is harder to clean since the sound card is right below, and the air coming from that thing, even when it is idle is ****ing hot. Do you think my video card may be overheating and sending a signal to the mobo to beep? I thought only the cpu temperature was measured.
Click to expand...


If PSU fan isn't working; that definitely could be the source of one of the problem. On the other hand; if GPU heats up and stops functioning (or any hardware for that matter); they could also bring down the system in BSOD/Reboot.
All hardware (specially GPU) function like motherboard (Remember they used to be called daughter-board back then?). Whenever a GPU heats up, at certain temperature, it will hang or completely shutdown; bringing the rest of the system down with it.
First remove soundboard and place it either on top of the video card PCI slot (If any) or, two to three slots below the video card; so video card can have room to breathe.
To clean GPU: You must take out the GPU and clean it with one of those air-cans (where there is air; there is also water) let it sit there for few minutes to dry. Or remove the GPU HSF cover (If you can and know how) and that's the best way to clean GPUs.

Good Luck.
 
I bought an Antec Smart Power 500w

Some of the cables are built in, but it comes with many different types of cables as you can see here


you can connect whatever types of cables you need. If you have a SATA HDD, then you connect one of the SATA cables. If you don't, then you connect one of the molex cables, etc.

Looking at this picture here(zoom in), you can see that many cables are pre-connected, but you can also see 4 black connection ports where you can plug up to 4 types of cables.

Each cable can cannect up to 3 devices. So if you plug in 1 molex cable, you can plug in 3 fans to it - you can even piggy-back molex cables if you need more things connected.

I have
One plug for up to 3 SATA drives
One plug for the PCIe card
One plug for all the fans
One plug for my two EIDE HDD's

also, one ring to rule them all.
 
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