You wrote:

“P/S ratings are a *maximum*. It’s possible to get a 400W that’s *really* a 350W”

This is mostly true of no-name or cheapo power supplies. However, if you buy an high-end P/S then the opposite might happen as well. When Tom’s Hardware tested the Zalman P/S that I bought (a 400W unit) he found that it topped out at 447 Watts. The article, a test of 13 P/S is a good read. You can find the article here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20030609/index.html

My Chieftec 350W power supply did just fine as well when powering my XP2400+ with a Nvidia GeForce4 4200 graphics card, SIS motherboard (very sensitive to poor P/S) and DVD/CD-RW/ZIP drive/hard drive combo. Chieftec isn’t really high end but it stood up to the task really well and my system has always been Rock solid. The rock solid part might also be a result of running Linux as well 🙂

Cheers,

David T.

What’s more, P/S ratings are a *maximum*. It’s possible to get a 400W that’s *really* a 350W. And it’s possible for a P/S to degrade.

My system – an AMD 2100 – just started acting funky on boot – masked as a video problem (nVidia geForce 64 meg something). With a warm reboot, the system would start – no prob. Immediately got me thinking capacitors, so I visually checked the boards. Reseated the graphics card, no resolution.

Then I unplugged the floppy (hell, I don’t remember the last time I used it!). System works fine now. 😉

New power supply this weekend. 540 Watts. Yeah.

Sorry about the off-topic subject but I got no other way to reach you 🙂

I just got a note from Marcel Gagné’s mail list where he he announced his next article in Linux Journal. I thought you might be interested in the topic:

“Hello everyone,

Having just received my new copy of Linux Journal, the December 2003 issue, I thought I should let you know that it is now available. This month’s “Cooking with Linux” column is titled “Put Another Nickel In . . .”, an allusion to those old days of nickel jukeboxes. Oddly enough, that’s exactly the topic of the article, jukeboxes. These jukeboxes all run on your Linux
system, allow you to catalog, store, organize (and otherwise make some sense of), and, of couurse, play all those MP3 and OGG music files you’ve been accumulating.”

Cheers,

/David T.

When it comes to power supplies, there is a tremendous amount of 230W and 250W supplies out there. If you are upgrading your box to P4 or Athlon status, change the PS. If I get asked to fix a box that has random lockups I usually begin by replacing the PS and then memory. 90% of the time it is either one.

/David T.

The good news? That Athlon machine will soon become my file server, hosting several 120 GB drives. It’s almost obscene, what IDE hard disk drives are selling for, after rebates.

Learnt that lesson very quickly. ALWAYS use a good power supply in an Athlon/Athlon XP/Duron system. 250 watts is simply not good enough.

I actually tell people to not skimp on the quality of the PS when building, as in “don’t buy the cheapest case”.