Power Supply Issues

[Chalky]

My system is
Dell 8250
PIV 2.6 GHz
1.0 gig PC1066 RAM
Radeon 9800 PRO
Two 7800 rpm Hard Drives
One Burner and One Standard CD Drive
One PCI SLOT Cooler

When I boot, my system tells me that "system battery voltage is low" and
sometimes it won't boot. Unplugging the PCI slot cooler or one of the drives
allows for normal boot--most of the time I can boot with everything if I
press F1 after the warning. I believe my power supply is a 250 watt
unit--does anyone have an advice on upgrading? Can a power supply limit the
performance of a PC or does inadequate power simply result in system errors
and failure? Any compatible units I should look into?

Thanks a bunch,
Chalky

===========================

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

My system is
Dell 8250
PIV 2.6 GHz
1.0 gig PC1066 RAM
Radeon 9800 PRO
Two 7800 rpm Hard Drives
One Burner and One Standard CD Drive
One PCI SLOT Cooler

When I boot, my system tells me that "system battery voltage is low" and
sometimes it won't boot. Unplugging the PCI slot cooler or one of the drives
allows for normal boot--most of the time I can boot with everything if I
press F1 after the warning. I believe my power supply is a 250 watt
unit--does anyone have an advice on upgrading? Can a power supply limit the
performance of a PC or does inadequate power simply result in system errors
and failure? Any compatible units I should look into?

Thanks a bunch,
Chalky

===========================

If you upgrade the power supply, which probably is not big enough
considering the problems you are having, you will have to get an adapter
cable to go from the new power supply to the Dell board. They use a
different cable, even though it looks the same, from their power
supplies to the motherboard.

 

[Augustus]

My system is
Dell 8250
PIV 2.6 GHz
1.0 gig PC1066 RAM
Radeon 9800 PRO
Two 7800 rpm Hard Drives
One Burner and One Standard CD Drive
One PCI SLOT Cooler

When I boot, my system tells me that "system battery voltage is low" and
sometimes it won't boot. Unplugging the PCI slot cooler or one of the drives
allows for normal boot--most of the time I can boot with everything if I
press F1 after the warning. I believe my power supply is a 250 watt
unit--does anyone have an advice on upgrading? Can a power supply limit the
performance of a PC or does inadequate power simply result in system errors
and failure? Any compatible units I should look into?

Dell's are notorious for small skimpy power supplies. I've read magazine
reviews where they marvel that the Dell system manages to run with such a
small one. Anyway. Dell P/S are proprietary, and you can get decent
replacements specifically for Dells from Antec and Enermax.

 

[cK-Gunslinger]

Chalky wrote:

I believe my power supply is a 250 watt
unit--does anyone have an advice on upgrading? Can a power supply limit the
performance of a PC or does inadequate power simply result in system errors
and failure? Any compatible units I should look into?

Here's an informative little article on Power Supplies, and how they
stack up:

http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/power_supply/default.asp

 

[Patrick Cras]

My system is
Dell 8250
PIV 2.6 GHz
1.0 gig PC1066 RAM
Radeon 9800 PRO
Two 7800 rpm Hard Drives
One Burner and One Standard CD Drive
One PCI SLOT Cooler

When I boot, my system tells me that "system battery voltage is low" and
sometimes it won't boot. Unplugging the PCI slot cooler or one of the drives
allows for normal boot--most of the time I can boot with everything if I
press F1 after the warning.

Did you already pressed on the coin-battery, i had this error also and after
pressing on the battery everything works fine, even with the 250 Watt power
supply.

Patrick

 

[DaveW]

Your power supply is MUCH too underpowered for all those components in your
system. You should have a much larger power supply if you don't want to
begin burning out components and getting errors and crashes.

 

[Chalky]

Can I really "burn out components" by using an insufficient power supply?

Chalky

 

[cK-Gunslinger]

Can I really "burn out components" by using an insufficient power supply?

Chalky

Under-powered components will probably have shortened life-spans. I
don't know if they will suddenly "burn-out" like an over-volted
component will. But your biggest risk is random reboots and a generally
unstable system. When you play a game or something and your HD and
CDROM both kick in and your PS can't deliver enough juice, your PC might
just randomly reboot. And that's pretty bad for the file system.
Probably not great for the hard drive in general..