Is a 230w PSU adeqate for a 3GHz P4 ?

1 DVD writer
1 ATA133 HDD
1 FDD
4 USB devices
128MB 6200 AGP card


Sluggish PC tower - would a higher wattage PSU solve this ?


Thanks

That's an extremely old machine.

AGP was superseded by Pci-e yonks ago.

So yes, I'd say a 230 watt psu probably is sufficient and NO a higher output psu wont speed it up.

How much RAM do you have? - I just upgraded a P4 3.20GHz from 1GB Ram to 2GB by adding 2 sticks of 512MB DDR memory - for the princely sum of £4.90 for both together, free postage.

It makes a real difference.

Still, you are likely to be running 32-bit XP, so the advantage of much more memory would be limited. Changing the PSU will not alter speed, but if there are stability issues, it can make all the difference. Another thing to look out for on aging electronic devices is bulging or leaking electrolytic capacitors. These are inexpensive to replace, but the alternative is often sudden device failure.

DIYspanner said:

Sluggish PC tower - would a higher wattage PSU solve this ?

Click to expand...

Anyway.

A P4 iirc will draw about 90w on full load, the motherboard and memory about 20-40w, and a few more watts for the disc drives etc. An AGP slot can only provide about 50w max to the graphics card. Rounding up you can see that on full tilt it will draw about 200w, on average it is probably drawing half that, so your power supply is fine.

If the system tries to draw more power than the PSU can provide, it will just blow it or cause the computer to shut down, faulty PSU's often cause the computer to shut down due to overheating, it has no bearing on the system speed.

2 gig memory is all you need for XP, but also the least I would recommend, and it should be installed as 2x1gb or 4x512mb not a single 2gb stick.

Also keep the system clean, run malwarebytes, run c-cleaner (free programs), run msconfig and turn of everything except critical programmes from running at startup, and defrag the drive.