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Power Supply - sufficient?

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Power Supply - sufficient?

Postby PiNCH » Wed Jun 09, 2004 10:17 pm

Hey there... I just registered here, and I'm hoping you guys can answer a question of mine...?
Here goes: my psu recently crashed, so I'm standing with a computer which has no power supply.
My question is, I have an old computer, which is about to get trashed, but it does have a working psu, though... So, I need to know if I can use this 4 years old psu, in my fairly new (1 year) computer:

The hardware specs:

The old one (with the "good" psu)
380Mhz AMD <something>
(4 years old IBM PC)
1 8GB HD
1 Passive cooled Voodoo 3
2 CD-Rom drives
64MB SD-RAM
Apart from that, it has both an extra VGA and sound on-board.

The newer pc:
1,3Ghz AMD Thunderbird
1 60GB HD
1 Passive cooled Voodoo 3 (same as above)
1 Cd-Rom Drive
512MB SD-RAM
This one has sound on-board, but not VGA.

The psu I wanna use, has a sticker which says someting about "Max 70watt"... Don't know if that's correct though... it's kinda low :roll:

So... Do you think my old psu can handle the newer computer?

A little side-note is, that the old psu is about half the size of a normal psu (length), but it looks like it fits alright...
Last edited by PiNCH on Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby PiNCH » Wed Jun 09, 2004 10:37 pm

One more thing:
What will happen, if the psu can't run the newer computer? Won't XP just make it crash before anything serious happens?
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Postby teststrips » Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:04 am

you may be OK with the older power supply as long as it is built well. I've never seen a computer p/s rated under 150 watts... i actually own one and run an athlon xp 2500 off of it, with a hard drive, cdburner/dvd, and about 4 fans... It's actualy hooked to my Television set and use it as a media device (show pictures, record tv shows - like tivo, watch dvds, browse the web, and listen to my very large mp3 collection)

i'd hook it up and hope for the best... worst thing that could happen is the power supply would get very hot and burn it's components. I'd make sure i had a system resource monitoring program like motherboard monitor (mbm) running and would really be watching the voltage information. If your 12v rail falls below 11.5volts or goes above 12.5, you probably don't want to leave the thing in there for a long period of time. If the P/S keeps stable voltages, you'll be fine.
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Postby PiNCH » Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:45 pm

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Postby Gecko » Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:02 pm

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Postby Restek » Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:58 pm

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