TR Forums

OK, so it's been more than a year since I built a box. Now I'm trying to do one for a friend on the ultra-skinny budget, recycling whatever stuff I still have around. I call a local store, General Nanosystems
(http://www.nanosys1.com), speak with a friendly sales associate, and when I'm spec'ing out my MB/Duron combo, she tells me I need to spend $65 on a new case because the old one I have is probably not AMD approved.

So I go to AMD's sight, and sure enough they have a list of "approved" case/PS vendors.

Is this for real? If so, how can it be? I mean the thing either has the right voltage or not, right? This smells fishy to me, and I think this is one of those things like when long ago battery operated toys said "Use with EverReady (TM) AA batteries only." Naturally any AA battery worked just fine.

What's your experience?

Hi,

It's to do with the ability of the PSU to provide sufficient current on certain rails - +5V and +3.3V from memory, there's more info on the AMD web site. Get a good PSU - it's money well spent, IMHO.

Bruce

Many lower-end PSU's cant provide the power they claim as max. Under a heavy load (like a T-Bird for CPU & a GF3 for vid card), your +5V rails to your IDE devices may be more like +4.5V...leads to instability. Worse, the +3.3V rail to the mobo may only provide 3.0V....really flaky.
I swap out no-names for Antecs when I encounter system instability with newer procs, and it frequently rectifies the problem.

Points well taken. I got so frustrated at the whole thing that I went and bought a Celery combo instead (besides, it was cheaper). I mean why should one processor require a $65 case/PS and another a $40 case/PS is fine?

Incidentally I talked to a Senior EE student at the U, and she told me the problems described are possible in ANY low end PS. She also couldn't see how under powering the processor could cause damage, but could cause extreme flakiness.

Anyhow, thanks for your input/opinions. As always, the Forums come through again.

From one of the PDF documents that I downloaded from AMD, they give other reasoning besides having the +5V power ready for things like keyboard power-on function.

Power supplies will have exhaust fans in the rear that blow out hot air. The intake for these fans is pulling air from the innards of the case. What AMD recommends is that the intake fan be on the bottom of the PSU, so that it is positioned directly above the hot air coming off of the CPU. Some power supply units have their air intakes positioned facing the top IDE drive in your case, and therefore, are not most-efficiently pulling excess hot air surrounding your Athlon. Athlons have tended to run pretty hot, if you haven't already heard.

I have a 300W power supply, but it's not AMD approved. I put an additional Enermax fan on the back of my case to pull more air away from the CPU. That cost me about $8 which is a bit cheaper than replacing the PSU. I figure if my CPU overheats, it's not gonna happen within a year's time (OEM warranty=one year) so I won't be able to get it RMA'd anyway.

Look at this link from AMD:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Tec ... 2_869_1039^1065,00.html

It has lists of PDF files that you can download.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jsbach11 on 2002-01-25 18:05 ]</font>