Hello, My spec is Win XP, AMD XP 2600+, 384MB RAM and I have just upgraded my AGP graphics card from a 5200fx to a 6600GT and was playing Battlefield 2 fine for approx 2 hours and my PC reset, went back into Batlefield 2 and played fine for another 20mins and reset again, is this the PSU thats casuing the problem or is it a faulty grahics card?? I have 2 HDD's, 2 CD/DVD drives, 3 fans, 1 LED light plus the 6600GT running off a 400Watt PSU, so was thinking its the PSU. Please help!
I would have to agree with you there about the PSU! 400W is pretty bismal for all that hardware your running and that 6600GT really chews up the juice! 500W should do the job but other feedback will arrive soon enough! BTW: 384MB RAM playing BF2 is also under par, you might consider getting at least 1GB of RAM for optimal playing
thats quite a lump of power your pc's using! thats 2 Hard disk, 2 Disc Drives (both DVD's?), Motherboard, Processor, and a high end graphics card.... the fans wont make much diffrence but is it definetly an LED? or is it a tube... Have you got a spare/old PSU lying around? (Any Wattage), if you do try running your graphics card off it (leaving everything else on the other PSU). If it runs fine like that, You will need to get a new case (with space for 2 PSU's) or a new PSU.... with more juice in it!
The light is in a tube which i think is LED, there's a DVD-Rom drive and the other is a CD/RW. I have another PSU from an old PC but didnt know you could run two together but that might be worth trying, also thought of just unplugging everything on the PC excpet the Card and one IDE to check the power too. I know the minimum spec of BF2 is 512Mb so will def need to upgrade the RAM! I was thinking about upgrading the PSU to at least 500Watt. Cheers!
500W would do the job very well! If the light is in a tube it is a CCFL/Neon light! They dont eat much power due to the inverters they use! Good Luck
make sure the PSU is a branded good quality trusted one (Sparkle, Antec, ThermalTake, Tagan, Enermax there are many more) and make sure it has enough amps as well, its not all about wattage remember. I'm sure the tagan one i have would do fine, its the TG480-U01 Black Silent Edition PSU and has all the connectors under the sun...awesome...
Ok thanks for your help everyone, just one question, do i have to worry about amps if i'm buying a 500watt PSU? Cheers
yeah make sure it has enough...i would say 25 amps minimum?! anyone want to change this as i'm not totally sure.
i'd go for my PSU, Tagan TG480-U01 Silent Black Edition PSU it has 28A on the 12V rail, 48A on the 5V rail and 28A on the 3.3V rail thats a lot and its 480Watts i keep going on about my psu but its amazing and i love it!
yes 25amps on the 12V rail seems about right and look for about 26~30amps on the 3.3 & 5V rails! This thread will help you > http://www.hardwareforums.com/showthread.php?t=5218
I would have thought that the amps would be the same (or similar) on every PSU of equal wattage... Watts is a measure of the TOTAL power, which is a mixture of Amps and Voltage... If im talking :swear: then just shout at me (via PM) and i will remove this
watts are very misleading. my antec 350watt beats the hell out of any generic brand 400watt and some even higher because it has higher amps on the rails. Also at higher temperatures quality name brand power supplies have stable amps compared to generic brands with amps drop quickly with temperature increases.
See the PSU link in my sig for more detail. Wattage is about total power, but temperatures can affect this. Also, if there's high amperages on the 3.3V and 5V rails, say 40A on each, but only 15A on the 12V rail, that's not gonna cut it. It may be a 500W unit, but if the amps aren't where they need to be, you're sol. The video card and CPU run off the 12V rail, and are typically the most power hungry.