How do you know if your PSU is not enough

[dog321]

I want to know if this is an issue with my PSU or what. I am running 500 watt ocz psu with 2 hard drives, dvd drive, a radeon 6950 graphic card, and a newly installed sound card. After playing around for a few hours with my sound card settings with zero no problems, all of a sudden my window froze. I shut down my computer and restarted it, but to find out only the fans turned on and no beep or anything, just a black screen. I took out my sound card for a little bit and reinstall it and my windows booted up normal again. What causes my computer to just show a black screen and fans running while booting? Is this a sign i need to upgrade my PSU? or whats the deal here. My computer is running right now no problem, but I am a little worried it might happen again, please help. Thanks

 

[davcon]

Most common symptoms of an underpowered psu.
bad 3D performance
crashing games
spontaneous reset or imminent shutdown of the PC
freezing during gameplay
PSU overload can cause it to break down
I'll take a wild guess and assume everything worked fine before you installed the soundcard.
Did you disable the onboard audio in the bios?
Did you uninstall the onboard audio drivers?
Did you load the cards drivers from an install cd?
Is there updated drivers for the soundcard?
If everything worked fine before the problem is the soundcard install.
Dump the install and try again with the newest drivers,
Install as ADMIN.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

I wouldn't blame it on the PSU right off. THat symptom can be an indicator of many things, and usually if the machine has been running full powered previously, its not a lack of watts.

You can do a quick check here to get an idea:
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp

Davcon mentioned a lot of good symptoms of a failing/underpowered system, but it also culd be many other things.

At the very least, back up important data, use your computer as normal and keep an eye on any indicators that occur before it crashes or fails to boot once more.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

I wouldn't blame it on the PSU right off. THat symptom can be an indicator of many things, and usually if the machine has been running full powered previously, its not a lack of watts.

You can do a quick check here to get an idea:
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp

Davcon mentioned a lot of good symptoms of a failing/underpowered system, but it also culd be many other things.

At the very least, back up important data, use your computer as normal and keep an eye on any indicators that occur before it crashes or fails to boot once more.

 

[davcon]

Take a good look at your Event Viewer in Windows.
It will give you a very good idea what's causing problems.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

I find that the event log is inadequate when the system hard locks up. If it recorded a driver or service failure, that would be fantastic however.

 

[badge]

A CompTIA sighting! Welcome back! I told you it was spelled T-o-m-s. Unbelievable? Not really. Google has had a browser for a while now.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

BADGE! I was afraid nobody was still around and a new flock was running the show. I'm here for good once more.

 

[badge]

You must have a REAL job. Or you have a chair embedded in your heart. Good to see 'ya. If you speak to the French techs, give them this.

http://funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/994456/French+flag/