Keep or Replace Old Enermax Whisper EG365P-VE Power Supply?

gryffinwings

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Nov 27, 2011
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Need an idea on keeping or replacing the power supply in the computer that I am building for Windows 98 SE for older games, it is an Enermax Whisper EG365P-VE PSU, I hear in general that Enermax are pretty reliable. Thoughts on keeping or replacing, I do have a newer Corsair 650-watt power supply, but it's a bit overpowered for my intended usage. Thanks for any advise.

Current Specifications:
-ASUS A7V266-E Motherboard
-AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (Palomino)
-Unbranded NVIDIA TNT2 M64 32MB (no idea what it's capable of)(I will be upgrading to a newer card, likely a Nvidia 6600GT or ATI Radeon 9500 Pro)
-512 MB DDR 266 CL 2.5 (Crucial Memory, I'm surprised)
-Unbranded Ethernet Expansion Card
-Enermax Whisper EG365P-VE PSU

Intend to buy a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Gamer at some point. Can't imagine all that would take too much power.
 
Solution
It may be difficult to find a modern PSU with most of its amperage on 5v. Athlon motherboards generally used 5v to power the CPU while modern PSUs are designed to power nearly everything from 12v (hence why all the yellow wires). It would most likely require grossly oversizing the PSU to get enough 5v capacity. Many of the 650w Corsair PSUs are only rated 25A on 5v which is far less than your little Enermax.

However, keep in mind that the Enermax is only rated 350w at 25C--derating to zero watts at 70C. So at a more typical 47.5C it can only deliver 175w anyway, and perhaps that system does not use all that much power. So the 650w may well work, but is definitely not overpowered.

All of my old Enermax PSUs are still in the...

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
Might just pick up a new PSU. Pertaining to the sound card, just be sure to see if the sound card has proper driver support. Creative are known to be bad with subsequent driver support(or prior). I once owned the Creative 2ZS Platinum(with the front panel connectivity options) and it was fantastic with when on Windows XP.
 
It may be difficult to find a modern PSU with most of its amperage on 5v. Athlon motherboards generally used 5v to power the CPU while modern PSUs are designed to power nearly everything from 12v (hence why all the yellow wires). It would most likely require grossly oversizing the PSU to get enough 5v capacity. Many of the 650w Corsair PSUs are only rated 25A on 5v which is far less than your little Enermax.

However, keep in mind that the Enermax is only rated 350w at 25C--derating to zero watts at 70C. So at a more typical 47.5C it can only deliver 175w anyway, and perhaps that system does not use all that much power. So the 650w may well work, but is definitely not overpowered.

All of my old Enermax PSUs are still in the Pentium 4 XP machines they were originally put into 15 years ago. I still fire them up once a year or so to get the POSReady2009 updates for XP (which end on Jan. 8, 2019). None of those have died--all of them still work just fine.

Audigy 1 has official drivers for Win9x (but not Audigy 2)
 
Solution