Random reboots - no minidump - out of ideas!

Ickymay - First, thanks for looking into it. At least now I'm aware that my system might be walking a fine line in terms of power. Unfortunately, it looks like I painted myself into a corner, as the 350W Antec Earthwatts power supply that comes with the NSK1380 case is a custom size that is not easy to swap out. That said, I'd hardly call it "unbranded"... ratings and forums all over the web rate Antec among the best power supplies available.

I don't envision adding too much to this rig, though (it's my wife's Word/Excel/web machine), so hopefully 350W will suffice for the long haul.

Thanks again,
Freeze

I strongly suggest you change your PSU asap. 350watt is not enough for todays standards, even thought your graphic card is onboard, you have 4 gig of modern ram with a hard drive and a CPU that requires lot of power.

PSU is not a component you can neglect. It has to be cleaned once in a while and you have to make sure you have enough power for all your components.

Well, it's going on 5 days now, with no unexpected restarts. Looks like the built-in windows 7 graphics drivers AND the most up-to-date graphics drivers from Gigabyte both led to unexpected restarts, while the newest drivers from ATI (which were dated 2/17/10, or something like that) are fine.

Based on all the comments here concerning the "underpowered" power supply, I went ahead and purchased a Kill-a-watt. I'll be interested to see exactly how much power this system draws. Perhaps a new power supply is indeed in my future...

Thanks again all,
Freeze

Nice to hear that ! :)

scottfreeze said:

Well, it's going on 5 days now, with no unexpected restarts. Looks like the built-in windows 7 graphics drivers AND the most up-to-date graphics drivers from Gigabyte both led to unexpected restarts, while the newest drivers from ATI (which were dated 2/17/10, or something like that) are fine.

Based on all the comments here concerning the "underpowered" power supply, I went ahead and purchased a Kill-a-watt. I'll be interested to see exactly how much power this system draws. Perhaps a new power supply is indeed in my future...

Thanks again all,
Freeze

For the PSU, your system probably has enough power to run, at minimum. But you are near the limit and the PSU is probably running a lot. You can expect a failure eventually, even if it's not soon.

So there is no hurry, but defenately, giving a new PSU of at least 400-450 watt to your CPU would help in many ways.


You can go for a budget PSU with a brand name that is well know, like Antec or even Ultra. They make good budget PSU. I'm a using an ultra 650 watt budget psu for my medium gaming rid at my second place of living and it is working pretty well.

For your usage, 450 watt would seem appropriate to me. But again, it's an opinion, it does not mean I have all the answers :)

Hi all,

This is a long dormant thread, but I thought I'd provide a bit more info for anyone interested. In response to all those who said that the system is underpowered:

I used a Kill-a-watt to measure the power draw of the computer in question (see original post) both at idle and under a full load (ran Prime95 in Blend mode while playing a 1080p video clip).

Results:
Power draw at idle: 52 watts.
Power draw under load: 138 watts.

-Freeze

Thorsen said:

I dont know enough about power supplies to say, but I was under the impression that a 350w and 550w power supply could still draw the same amount of power that the system needed. The difference is that the 600w is able to convert the incoming power to more amps for the voltages on the rails. I dont know though.....

Someone correct me if Im wrong.


Edits: Also, If you get a 550w PSU, it wont run up your electric bill faster than a 350w. You just have the capacity to get higher amps. I think this is correct. dont know....

You have it just about right. watts=volts x amps. A larger wattage PSU can supply more amps (at the same voltage) than the smaller. BTW it may just be the amount of amps on the video rail is insufficient.

think someone could look at this to see what my problem is?