TR Forums

okay, i made a new system but I'm not sure if i have enough power. sometimes my pc freezes and my monitor blacks out. is it my power?
my system is:

Socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+ with 2000rpm 9cm fan
Two PC3200 512MB memory
ASUS A8V motherboard
Radeon 9600XT VGA card
Two 80GB HDD [RAID 1]
1 DVD-RW drive
300W power supply
2 12cm fans

my power supply is:
http://www.geocities.com/zoltan256/PS2_300W.pdf

other things:
my monitor is not broken; i have tried other monitors.
I get these problems when im doing something like surfing the net or playing games. i think the computer freezes too..
could it be a vga card problem? I dropped my card before and that may be the problem.

any help would be appreciated


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well first of all a basic rule of thumb is that any modern computer should have a PSU of at the lowest 350W, but before replacing your psu i would run your computer and check your voltage rails with either bios monitoring, Asus Probe, or a DMM, if you have plenty of power under a load (my 550W psu has a 12V rail of 12.12V, 5V rail of 5.1V and 3.3V rail of 3.32V), then the psu should be fine, 12V rail should be 11.6 at the lowest ever, if it drops below that you definately need to replace the psu..

other possible situations:

try using only one stick of ram, you could be having a faulty ram situation
if you have access to a space video card, try using it for a while

*remember troubleshooting is all about testing single variables!

Well, it could be almost anything... but it does look like your +12V rail is a bit underpowered. 14A isn't much these days, as most systems now draw all of the CPU power from the +12V rail.

I would try swapping out the PSU first, for a decent name-brand unit with at least a 350W rating.

It could be your card..do you have another you could try? It almost sounds like a heat related issue..and i agree...another..better PSU is in order.