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Should I upgrade my power supply?
Greetings all,
I have a Dell XPS R400 that I plan to upgrade in the very near future and I am somewhat concerned that my power supply might be inadequate for the new upgrades. My system currently has a 200 watt PS and its configuration is as follows:
Pentium ll 400 - 512 MB PC100 RAM - 2 WD 7400 RPM hard drives - RivaTNT AGP video card with 16MB - 32/12X CDRW - CD-ROM drive - Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (ISA) - PCI Network Card - Floppy Drive.
The upgrades I am looking at:
Powerleap 1.4 GHZ (PL-ip3/T) - Gainward GEForce 3 Ti200 video with 128MB - Promise Ultra/ATA 100 controller - Sound Blaster Audigy X-Gamer.
After reading through some of the posts on this subject, by biggest concern is the graphics card, since it seems that the GEForce chip has some pretty hefty power requirements.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.
Cal
JOKERSWILD
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Posted March 9th, 2003 20:00
The 250 watt power supply is actually 345 watts.The Dell power supply is not a standard ATX power supply which is what you probably see at price watch.- Are you sure about the power supply? I am in the same boat with the other guy as I would like to upgrade the graphics card as well. Mine is rated at 250W. You can get cheap power supply units at www.pricewatch.com for $20 so I might do it anyway. Thanks.
He's quite right, its not a standard power supply........i went into more detail about this in another post in this forum, but basically they have mudged some of the pinouts on the connectors to the motherboard, and standard ATX supplies will fit in the case but not work.
However, there is a cure (and I'll not debate the power rating of the Dell supply but would be surprised if it was really that high), go to http://www.centrix-intl.com/ and do a search for "dell" if you want to use a "normal" ATX power supply, it's a $!0 adapter that corrects the incompatible power supply wiring in Dell's motherboard.
@JOKERSWILD wrote:
Your fine the Dell power supply is underrated 200watt is closer to 300 watts.
I have a dimension xps b933r with a 200 watt power supply. Is my power supply underrated?Btw: When i power up,the fan makes a funny noise for about five minutes and then goes away. Should i be concerned about my power supply?
@VonSinkum wrote:
A cooling fan will make a some noise on start-up.... for a few minutes........when it is preparing to exit this world and go to "Fan Heaven". Yuppers.... the bearings are on their way out. Keep your eye on it.
So what kind of power supply (fan cooled of course) should i get if this one fails? I have Dimension XPS B933R/128 RDRAM,one IBM Deskstar 45GB HD,one IBM Deskstar 120GB HD,etc...should i list everything? Thanks for your advice.AmigaTTSOM
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Posted April 18th, 2003 02:00
Btw: When i power up,the fan makes a funny noise for about five minutes and then goes away. Should i be concerned about my power supply?
You might want to listen real close to see which fan it is. I had this happen for a number of months--until it stopped one day. Turns out it was the graphics card cooling fan. I started getting graphic corruption after the machine was on for a few hours. Dell replaced the graphics card under warranty, but if this turns out to be your problem you should be able to just get the fan for a few bucks from Radio Shack.
JOKERSWILD
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Posted March 9th, 2003 17:00