PC Rebooting

[gaskie]

Guys,

I dont know a whole lot about this sort of stuff, so please bear with me if my terminology is not 100%.

Basically, I have just finished building a new PC for myself with the folloing specs:

P4 2.4 (133x18 in my BIOS)
Asus P4S8X-X motherboard
GF FX 5200 g/card
512mb ram
120gb WD HDD

Now, what happens is whenever I do anything that involves intense CPU activity for more than a few minutes, my PC will reboot. Shortly before this, my ASUS monitoring software will pop up, and the +3.3v meter is saying that it has dropped to around 2.8v. There are no apparent signs of overheating, because the temp guage stays the same. I really have no idea where to go from here, I cant even upgrade my OS because it reboots halfway thru when the going gets tough 🙁.

Any help with this would be so appreciated, you cant believe how angry I am that this is happening!!

TIA,

James.

 

[JP5]

get a good name brand power supply with at least 300W

 

[dwellman]

No. . . You should try for more than 300W. <A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20030609/index.html" target="_new">http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20030609/index.html</A>

But yeah, it definitly seems to be PSU related.

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<b><font color=red>Three great virtues of a programmer are: laziness, impatience, and hubris.</font color=red><b>

 

[gaskie]

Yeah, everyone has said that it is PSU related so I have checked it out.

Had a look at mine, its a 350w Tsunami PSU, recommended for P4's apparently 🙁. But the annoying thing is that my mates Compaq of similar spec is running on a 250w PSU with no problems at all.

Does my graphics card suck loads of power from the psu? Its a GF Fx 5200 64mb. I only have 1 Hard drive and a graphics card in my computer, no CD-roms or anything to take power away.

All very confusing 🙁

 

[ChipDeath]

The thing to remember is that cheap PSUs usually simply can't cope with what they claim. - it may say 350W but can probably only deliver 200W stably.

Check out the toms review of PSUs - I think someone's stuck a link above this somewhere - Some of the cheap PSUs are truly terrible.

I had power problems so I bought a new 430W enermax PSU, and It's been fine ever since.

p.s. I pity your friend.... urgh... Compaq... *shudders*

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$hit Happens. I just wish it would happen to someone else for a change.

 

[dwellman]

Yessir! Those GeForce FX can suck a load of power. When it comes to PSU, big is beautiful.

Regards,

Dave

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<b><font color=red>Three great virtues of a programmer are: laziness, impatience, and hubris.</font color=red><b>