AMD Thunderbird + 235Watt PS = BSOD

[Technoid]

I was out to a customer to Install a NIC so he could use his cable modem.

The first thing I noticed after taking the cover off was:

A 235 Watt PS!

Siemens-fujitsu is only being stupid because the case is the same one they used on P3 500'eds..

And ofcourse they don't check AMD's recomendations...

I asked the customer as inocently as I could:


Do this computer have instability problems?

And the customer said:

YES

And continued to tell me all of the classic "not enough juice in the ps" symptoms...


Why why why?

It's almost 2 years since the Athlon debuted and AMD recomended a 300watt PS!!

[SCompRacer]

Many power supplies don't even list the combined power output. Thats an important number to look for.

[The PIT]

Well these companies don't like "unqualified" techies looking at there computers ( I wonder why). Yet they send machines out like that.

Doh

[Technoid]

The worst example of that was a PS with a added "300Watt" sticker on the original 200 watt sticker.

The absolute worst of it was the fact that if you added togheter the stated watts of 12+,,, etc it only got up to 180 watts

[Novdid]

Well that's OEM computers, they generally suck. They should know that a 300W PS is a bare minimum.

How many MHz if I may ask was the CPU rated for.

[Technoid]

I think it was a 1 GHz!

And when they were at it they selected a fan thats despite its size did a pretty bad job considering that I almost burned my fingers on it!