Insufficient Power?

[SpringHeeledJa]

I have an old socket 754 Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4ghz
2GB OCZ DDR 400hz RAM
Abit KV8pro MotherBoard
160GB SATA HDD, SAmsung i think, can't remember number
Gainward 512mb GeForce 7800GS AGP (w/7800GT core) - w/ Artic Cooling
DVD and CD drives.
and a few extra fans and exhaust at the back.

My power supply is a Jeantech 450W

A few weeks ago my younger cousin was on my computer playing BF2 and came to tell me it had gone all slow. When i came to check it was lagging like hell and when i quit to desktop there was an error message saying due to insufficient power the "sentinel something" (?) had set the graphics card to a lower level to avoid damage. I opened up the comp checked all cables and all was fine, reconnected them all anyway and used different spare cables (Card requires 2)

So i try it out and same thing happens again, after 30mins or so game goes laggy and same message pops up. I monitored my temperature during this time and it was ALOT higher than usual, it can usualy run at 50's low 60's but now it was running mid/high 70's. I opened up the case and got my huge fan from the living room and put it facing the GFXcard and when i tried it again with BF2 it worked fine but the second i switched the large fan off it errored again. RTS games like CnC's etc worked fine without the fan but all First person shooters like BF and Call of Duty caused these problems.

With further testing and stuff i found that my fans will no longer go above 3000RPM. Whenever i set my processor fan to turbo, it would reach 3200rpm Max, but it's always hit 7000's before this all happened. Graphics card fan is the same.


I've half solved the problem but i needed some guidance.

Is this problem possibly due to the gradual decline of my Power Supply? I've read a few things about power supplies and i've not heard one reccomendation of JeanTech. :(

Will replacing the PS with a new one, maybe 500W solve this do you think?

Almost forgot. I've had this Power Supply for 2 years. And it's run fine on this setup for about 4 months. - ran w/ a geforce5700 before that.

I'm planning to sell this computer you see and without this problem fixed i don't want to sell it.



Thanks in advance and sorry if i've already answered my own question after the long winded explanations and wasted your time. :)

 

[donkey42]

Will replacing the PS with a new one, maybe 500W solve this do you think?

with PSU's wattage can mean nothing and mor often than not does mean nothing, say a 500W PSU may only have 1 rail outputing 12V or 5.5V but the output may not provide enough power as some 300W PSU's

a brand of PSU that does provide the labeled wattage is Antec, i surgest the Antec True Power 2 i recommend you read Big B's PSU sticky, cos B's da man, when it comes to PSU's

Edit: i would think with that spec you should have at least a decent 450W PSU (don't know much about jeantech) but if i were you i'd get a 500W decent PSU

 

[SpringHeeledJa]

ok, checked my power supply and its 15A and 17A on the 12V rails and 28A and 35A on the 3.3V and 5.5V respectively. It's also 400W not 450W

I don't think the amount of power conserned is a problem as it's been running like this for some time. What i'm unsure about is the power supply decay thing, i read somewhere that depending on the quality, power supplies can lose up to 20% of their power over the years. Just wanted to know whther that was a plausable explanation.

I'll have to get a new power supply anyway so thanks for the reccomendations, either that or i advise the person who buys it to replace the power supply.

 

[Big B]

Do you have a multimeter handy? You should check the 12V rail and see if it's within the +/-5% tolerance range. If it's not, then that could be a source of problem. The specs don't seem that bad, but again, Jeantech doesn't come to mind in power supplies, so I couldn't tell you if they're crap, awesome, or just middle of the road.

And the degredation is true, how much depends on the PSU quality and the time in use.

 

[SpringHeeledJa]

I bought an Antec Truepower 2 480W and eventually got around to putting it in and all is well now. Problem solved, the jeantech power supply had degraded a fair amount.

 

[Big B]

Good choice.