Not enough power?

januszian

New Member
Hello. Here's my setup in an ANTEC SONATA PIANO case:

- Intel Pentium 4 2,8 GHz Hyper threading cpu
- Asus P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard
- Maxtor Diamondmax 9 120 GB SATA harddrive
- Ati Radeon 9800 Pro 256
- M-Audio Delta 1010LT multichannel recording soundcard
- Pinnacle Studio 9 AV/DV video capture card
- Liteon LDW-411S DVD+-R/RW, CD-R/RW writer
- Floppy disk drive
- 1 GHz dual channel kit Kingston hyper-X PC3500 memory at 2,75 V.
- 6 USB devices, including printer, Webcam, gamepads and mouse.
- I have the firewire port enabled on the motherboard
- The motherboard also has an Intel 1 gigabit LAN adapter which I use.
- Zalman CNPS 7000A Cu CPU cooler, a Zalman ZM80C-HP display card cooler and three extra fans including the 120 mm that came with the case.

I suspect that 380W might not be enough to drive this monster as I use software like Pinnacle studio 9, Doom III, Cakewalk Sonar 3 Producer Edition and DVD burning tools.
Am I totally wrong in my assumption?

Also I've run my setup as 3,5 GHz before the soundcard and the video capture card and everything seemed fine.
 
Last edited:
If you are overclocking there isn't enough power there, most likely. I am not so sure that there isn't enough power if you are leaving your processor speed and everything the same. You configuration will consume a lot of power. Look in your BIOS and see how much power each device is consuming.
 
Look in your BIOS and see how much power each device is consuming.
Most bios's tell you the voltage status, rather than the power use.

While you are on the lighter side for power, if its a solid PSU you'll be plenty fine. I'm running my rig with a 420W power supply and Im only using two of the three rails (because the third one is snaked outside of the case for a single fan) .. voltage levels are plenty stable even for OCing.
 
thanks for the replies. I'd just need to test the machine with a psu which provides more power than my Antec Truepower 380W.

also the Asus has a bunch of "tweaking" properties. I've set the performance enhancers to full and turbo and set the timings to minimum. Everything else is "overclocked" (without being overclocked) except the processor.

Also I'm sure that the Delta soundcard takes power because it's a 10 in / 10 out soundcard with two professional mic preamps and a bunch of digital junk and an onboard realtime mixer built in. Also the Pinnacle videocapture card must take some power because it's a huge task to capture video in DV format.
 
Last edited:
Also I'm sure that the Delta soundcard takes power because it's a 10 in / 10 out soundcard with two professional mic preamps and a bunch of digital junk and an onboard realtime mixer built in. Also the Pinnacle videocapture card must take some power because it's a huge task to capture video in DV format.
They do take power but not horribly much. The big drainers are you CPU, video card any mechanical drives youve got
 
Its a pretty nice util there and does a decent job of catering to mainstream computers and such but it fails to cater to some (even amateur) overclocking setups (premium aftermarket fans etc .. theres not a chance some of them fans are runnin 3W heeehee)

As for power conmsmption increase during OCing, you'd have to know the current flowing through the board for that considering OCing often involves upping the voltage. By simple process of P = VI, you can determine the power increase ....
 
And the frequency must have something to do with it as well.

The list had a choice "P4 800 MHz FSB hyper threading." Mine's closer to 1000 FSB.
 
So it's got to be the PSU that's holding me back. My computer was COMPLETELY stable at 3,5 GHz before I bought my soundcard and video capture card. Now I can't even turn on the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe built in "enhancers" like turbo or PAT without the machine rebooting when using Studio 9 or other Doom III. Damn... oh well, Antec TruePower 550W should do the trick!
 
And the frequency must have something to do with it as well.
No, its to give people a general feel for which option to pick .. seeing as people care all about MHz and all :P

The list had a choice "P4 800 MHz FSB hyper threading." Mine's closer to 1000 FSB.
No it isnt

My computer was COMPLETELY stable at 3,5 GHz before I bought my soundcard and video capture card
Could also sounds like lack of or disabled AGP/PCI locks

Watch your temperatures. If your computer won't boot it might be because your CPU is overheating.
Not with Intel (well it shouldnt be hitting those kinds of temperatures on boot ... even if you cycle power over a span of 1sec... thats a 5C drop right there)
 
Back
Top