Should I upgrade my PSU? Having problems providing power to external hard drives and my iPod

[40seconds]

Hey all,

I have noticed that my machine is having problems powering up external devices that have hard drives in them, but what puzzles me is that this wasn't the case back then.

I usually plug my external hard drive and iPod classic (the 120gb one) into my machine in the past with no problems but now i just hear ticking sounds which I think means that my machine can't provide enough power to the components.

I then tried the following:
- Unplugged 2 120mm fans that have LEDs in them
- Unplugged my LED light thing that has 3 LEDs in them
- Set my third 120mm fan to the lowest wattage via fan controller

Then I plugged my external hard drive but it still won't work continously, but at least it was detecting it. As for my iPod it was seeing it in device manager and I was able to add files into it but the connection to the device was intermittent.

And then one day I was messing around with it again I unplugged the video card but left the fans and other components plugged in but it still can't detect my external hard drive.

I am starting to blame two things now, either the PSU or the MOBO.

I use a HEC Raptor 500w PSU. Motherboard is an ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO (AM3).

I used this calculator to calculate my wattage consumptions.

Here are the values that I got from the calculator:

I set the capacitor aging variable to 20% because the PSU is 4 years old, this is based on the recommendation of the calculator on it's footnote.

Thanks for any input guys.

 

[tuxthepenguin]

You generally need a supplemental power source for hard drives other than USB. Check to see if the have a standard electrical cord and plug them into a power strip but keep the USB. This should go for the external hard drive. USB isn't designed to run that sort of power, and your iPod trouble might be a USB port problem. But switch the external hard drive to an external power soufce and check to see if the USB Port is damaged. If you have a hard drive w/o an external power source then you might be having trouble with the USB, which sounds likely based on your iPod's behavior. Check/replace the cords and/or port.