The motherboard sensors tend to be pretty slow and only give you an average value. Unfortunately, long before you see hardware failing due to low voltage, you'll run into problems with transients. Short of hooking up some expensive test equipment (a oscilloscope would work), there isn't much you can do to test for these -- and power supply manufacturers don't typically tell you all the specs that you need to know. As a rule of thumb, if you buy a power supply that has generous extra ampere ratings on all of the different voltage lines (e.g. 3.3V, 5V, 12V, and the negative ones), chances are you'll get something that will be able to avoid transients, but even then there are no real guarantees. For a system with one or two fast CPUs (1GHz and above) and a modern AGP graphics card, you will probably want to get a PSU that is rated in excess of 300W (450W or so is probably a good bet). If you can buy a reputable brand-name product, you might want to consider that option -- and even after all this, you might still have bad luck and end up with a PSU that just doesn't work with your system.
Markus P.S.: BTW, if your graphics card has a connector that allows you to supply additional power directly to it rather than going through the AGP bus, then make sure you take advantage of this. Modern graphics card put quite some load on the system and not all motherboards can supply this much current over the AGP bus itself. Xavier Bestel wrote: > Le mer 11/09/2002 � 21:18, Alexander Stohr a �crit : > >>He should think about the power supply... > > > The integrated health status sensors of my motherboard tell me voltages > are Ok ... can I trust them ? > > _______________________________________________ > Xpert mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert -- Markus Gutschke 3637 Fillmore Street #106 San Francisco, CA 94123-1600 +1-415-567-8449 [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
