300 watt vs 350 watt vs 431 watt

[Guest]

I currently have a 300 watt power supply that came with my case. i got the case cuz it was huge (many bays, etc. and relatively cheap) should i get a 431 enermax power supply or what?

Processor: amd thunderbird 1.1 gig processor
Motherboard: asus a7v motherboard
Memory: Micron 256mb pc 133 sdram (128 sticks)
DVD/Cdrom Drive and decoder: Pioneer 16x/40x & Hollywood Decoder
CD rewriter: plextor 12x10x32 cdrw drive
Floppy Drive
4ardrive: 61.4gig 75GXP 7200 RPM IBM Deskstar
Promise Fasttrack Raid Controller
Soundcard: creative labs sblive! Platinum
Video Card: 64mb Guillemot 3D Prophet GeForce 2 Ultra
blue orb \
thunderbird spacer \
ultimate hard drive cooler \
1 twin turbo \
monitor fan \
slot fan (ball bearing, not slot bearing)/
bay freezer / all fan/cooling products rom 3dcool.com
2 80x80x25 fan 4 pin /
2 80 mm fan filter /
FOP38 /
Monitor: 19” optiquest Q95
MS intellieye explorer
3M Precision Mousing Surface Blue Water
Logitech Wingman Rumblepad Gamepad
Win 2k Pro
Red Hat Linux

 

[Bubba]

Is your computer freezing up or are you having any problems that may be power related?
If so, go ahead and get a bigger one.
If not, then I really don't think you need it unless you have the extra money.
If you got the cash, why not.

I have the Enermax 430W PS.
I found it cheap and had some extra $$ to blow.

 

[Guest]

Is that four (4) Hard Disks that you have, or is it a typo? "4arddrive"?? If you have 4 drives with all of that stuff your power supply should be able to handle it, but I am sure that you are pulling close to max output of the power supply. The only way to really know is to hook up a UPS that allows you to monitor to load on the UPS so you could tell just how much power your system uses. If you have all of that equipment and it did not break you than you need to get a UPS anyway to protect your investment. I use a Back UPS Pro 650. I run it for server at home which is similar to your system, but it just sits idle most of the time. The load is around 40% on the UPS. I would imagine yours would be a little higher as I only use a Duron 700 clocked to 900mhz, 192mb RAM, 3 hard drives, two of them are the IBM 75gxp 45gb versions, a CD-ReWriter, ZIP, GeForce GTS 2, etc... but I use a Dual 300 Watt redundant power supply. I had no problems with one, but to increase uptime incase of failure I got the dual power supply unit. If you get a larger power supply be sure it is of a good name brand backed with a good warranty, as some of the cheap manufacturers will use cheap components to boost the power output, but it reduces overall life.

 

[Guest]

nope, only one harddrive. but this computer isnt done yet. im asking should i just buy a bigger power supply right off the bat?