overloading/overheating
 

been messing with me crappy athlon 500 pooter. I have...

3HDs, dvd, cdrw, floppy & zip

im guessing cos theres enough power connectors that everything will be just fine, but am i risking the chances of overheating or have enough power to run all this without shortening its lifespan. offhand cant remember how much powersupply i have atm

Does also depend how many and what PCI/AGP cards you have in the machine, as these will be drawing power too. If, for example, you have a flash gfx card with an on-board fan, this will draw a more juice.

From the dark recesses of my mind, standard psu's will be around 230 - 260 watt, and when building Athlon systems with 900 chips (I think) we did need to use 300w psu's.

Me being me, I'd probably look at a 300+ psu and chuck one in, will make sure you have more than enough power, and more power is always a good thing :)

yep prolly a 300 watt power supply which with all that gear running is going to cause problems in the future. as markus says more power the better. i went for overkill with a 550w but then i am running 4 hd, 2 cd, raddy 9800 pro, all my pci slots are full with video capture, dvb card, lan cards and seven 80mm fans . my system runs cool at the expense of a liitle more noise. get a bigger power supply. overclockers are doing some cheap ones.

cheers

big sinky

graphics is only tnt2 32mb so im sure itll do for now, as its a mishmash of bits & nothing fancy till i get a new one. but perhaps its best that i backup me p0rn just in case the hds blow ;):D