P4 Power Requirements

[dee]

I'm thinking of upgrading from my long standing & well serving system.

ATM, I'm running:

secc2 P3-850 (@950)
asus p3b-f mobo
392MB ram
tekram u2w
x15-18GB (1st gen), 40GB IBM GXP60, 80GB IBM GXP120
plex820, ultraplex40max, pioneer 103 SCSI
gf3-ti500
midiman delta410
wintv pci
3com-905c

This is all housed in a aopen hx-08. The case was bought maybe 4 years ago & has a sparkle 300W atx2.1 PSU which has never given me any problems.


I'm thinking of doing a straight swap of mobo/cpu/mem to a 2GHz Northwood, Epox 4G4A, 512MB Crucial PC2100. Any ideas as to whether I'll need to buy a new PSU?

THX, dave

 

[BlvdKing]

You may not need a new PSU. Does it have the 4 pronged square connector on it to plug into the motherboard? This is vital to keep the CPU stable.

Some people claim that a 350 watt + PSU is needed, but I am running my 1.6A @ 2.4 with only a 300 watt enlight PSU. Your milage may vary.

 

[dee]

My PSU doesn't have the square connector, but I don't think the EPoX mobo I'm looking at has a socket for it either. Any idea if this is going to have an impact?

 

[BlvdKing]

I don't know if the Epox boards have this or not but some boards have a straight 4 pin connector so you can plug the PSU right into the motherboard. That way you don't need the square 4 pin connector.

THis is weird - the 4SDA doesn't look like it has a 4 pin connector of any sort, while the 4BDA has the square 4 pin connector. Any ideas on this?

BTW, I would not run the computer without plugging in the 4 pin power connector if the board has one. It could cause CPU instability.

 

[dee]

An update for anyone interested....

Got the Epox 4G4A, P4 & 512MB Samsung Ram a few days ago.

The Epox board doesn't have the 4 pin power socket seen on most other P4 boards.

Despite this, my system is 100% stable with my old (old) 300W PSU.

 

[apoppin]

Are you O/C'ing? If so, you might need a "better" PS. If not, you are well above the minimum power for P4s (and Epox claims it doesn't need the special P4 connector - even for O/C'ing, they're right).

 

[Jgtdragon]

I don't think you need to worry about your power supply. I got the exact same one you using and I am running my system curently @ 1.8@2.3Ghz. I got other scsi stuffs in my case too. No problem. Sparkle is quality power supply.

 

[dee]

No overlocking in here anymore - after maybe 7 years I think I've reached a point where it's no longer required...

The Epox manual states min 250W so I was always confident that I could handle the CPU - was bothered by the additional 3x HD, 3x OD & various cards - happily there seems to be no problem (touchwood).