Limitations of a 320w Powersupply

[Tonybologna23]

I have a quiet 320w powersupply that I forgot was in a machine of mine. I am about to add a third hard drive to it and was wonderinf if that would mean needing to get a new Powersupply.

3.0 "c" ghz p4
one cd drive
one 74gb raptor, one sata 250gb
6600GT

Those are the most power consuming elements, and I want to add a 300gb drive to it. I think I am OK but not sure.

 

[twajetmech]

Looks to be pushing the limit of the psu, but there is no harm in trying, worse case scenario is it won't boot.

 

[fuelvolts]

Looks to be pushing the limit of the psu, but there is no harm in trying, worse case scenario is it won't boot.

but what will probably happen is it will boot, but be incredibly unstable - or just unstable enought that you dont notice. When you go to bed at night turn on prime95 and stress test it if it even boots at all with all that stuff running.

If it still works in the morning, you are golden...but keep an eye out for anything weird.

 

[sarbz]

I've been running my new system(in my sig) with my old 300w seasonic super tornado. No problems yet. Runs prime95 all night But seasonics are good psu's. There are a lot of other 300w psu's that I wouldn't run in my rig.

 

[Archaea]

I've got a 3.2 northwood
is7
4 hardrives
audigy2
PCI lan card
1GB of RAM
about 8 system fans
6800 GT.

I found with my 2.4 and 3.2 ghz processor I have to have a delayed IDE startup on my motherboard in order to be able to use all the drives, with my 1.6ghz p4 i didn't have to do this.

If i don't allow for the IDE delay then the 250GB sata drive just makes clunking noises cause there is too much power draw all at once...with the delay everything else fires up and then the IDE's start when the intial draw is gone.

With a 5 second delay before IDE turnon (edit field in bios) I have no problems. I've been considering upgrading PSU's just to see if it would help my overclock though. I really want 4.0 (1ghz FSB) on my 3.2 northwood, and right now I can get 3.7 on stock voltage but no more even going to 1.625 (registers as 1.55) in the hardware monitor.

My 400 watt Sparkle PSU 12 volt rails are running at about 11.8 or so and the system is stable.