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Just thoight i would post about an issue ive had for about
3 weeks where my pc would just shut down and re-start
when i tried to use media player, or burn a disc ?

The problem pointed towards a Driver conflict,
windows clever crash report kept telling me its a driver issue,
and seeing that i had previously ruled out HEAT, it was the
logical road to take

Anyway, one of the last tests i decided to do before a re-install assuming
it was a driver confilct was to disconnect my 500GB Drive.

I done that and my pc became stable again
So i attached a independant power supply and hey its all good again.

Summary
My PSU is loosing some of its umff,
its been fine for over 6 months with this new 500gb drive
and only in the last 3 weeks has it been playing up.

So i need to up my PSU from 400 to 400 + and i'm all happy again

Just sharing, as we overload our pc's with more and more Hard Drives lol

glad you got it sorted.

And good thinking sharing your findings, If I had shared my experiences then you could have had this solved as soon as it started happening, instead of having to wait till today when you just mentioned your problem and I was like "I had that problem, try this" just as that was the test that was next on your list anyway, DOH.

One way to avoid all this shit, buy a decent PSU from that start.

A "400 watt" PSU is very rarely that, unless its cost a decent amount of money. My mums PC (my old one) is running on a 400w Antec TruePower PSU, and it has been 100% over the years it been used, even when I was creasing it with intense voltages for extreme overclocking of everything, had 3 180GXP hard drives installed, Radeon 9800Pro, a Barton Athlon 3200+ overclocked clocked at 2450Mhz (probably around 4000PR) on 1.75v, 1.5GB of OCZ PC3200 ULL Rev 3.2 RAM (3x 512MB running at 464Mhz 2T 2T 2T 6T 1T @ 2.85v) along with numerous cold cathodes and 6 fans, all running LED's in,, 2 rear extraction fans, an Asus iPanel Deluxe, 2 CDRW's, 1 DVDRW etc...

The power draw must have been... well stupid, let just say before I bought my 400w, I was running on a "550w" PSU low end PSU (I think it cost about £35), and it just couldnt handle the load, it died within weeks of installing the Barton and RV360, and when I put a supposed "400" in until the Antec 400w was delivered, and it took literally 10 seconds before it went bang and smoked haha. I was lucky not to frazzle the entire PC to be honest!!

The Antec cost me £68, but was worth every penny, the 400w rating was actual power supply, not peak power like a lot of PSU's quote, that 550w I had running probably couldnt provide more then 300w sustained. To this day, the PC is still running most of that crap, and the PSU is still doing me (well me mum now) proud!

You have to consider the fact that buying a high end PSU, you get an almost true 12v supply across 3 (yes 3 lol) rails (like around 11.9v instead of the under 11 volts cheap ones max out at, which can cause your PC to randomly reboot), they will be far quieter then low end competitors, and they have circuitry protection features not found on cheap PSU's such as SCP, OVP, OPP and UVP protection, as well as dual circuitry to ensure redunandcy.

I say it again and again to people, dont skimp on the PSU, its the thing that puts the juice into your PC, if it does it wrong, your fooked, and its easy to overload and burn out cheap ones, which can also lead to burn outs on your hardware as they dont have circuitry protection on them.

mine only has a 350w psu (i think - fujitsu siemens scaleo p).. have multiple drives connected to it and have never came across anything like this

Well this one i have has done me proud,

4 years and back then £60 i paid.
So its just haggard now lol

The amount of connectors on mine is wicked, on new ones
there is hardly any to supply all devices.

Will get another one soon.

If its a standard PSU supplied with the PC, it will more then likely be 350watt real power. Manufacturers know that low end PSU's can cause allsorts of problems, so they tend to spend the cash on decent ones.

I know my HP has a 280watt PSU and it can push that sustained, which at the time the PC was bought, it would have been considered a "very expensive" PSU lol.

In my pc i have

5 Hard Drives
1 DRDRW
Firewire controllers
AGP
Loads of fans lol

so its done well and feeling its age lol

Get a good one and you will see the difference, there are tons of connectors on expensive PSU's. Dont be looking at the Jtech or whatever it its called crap PC World sell instore, its very rare to get a dud PSU when buying a decent one, so dont worry about RMA's, buy online.

Personally I wouldnt go for anything less then an Antec 500w nowadays, they are cheap enough (I considered one for me mums PC when I bought the 400, but they were £130 at the time lmao) - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114931

That will last you forever haha!

It mustnt be a true power PSU then, cos 400w of real power should be plentiful for that to be honest. PSU's tend to get burnt out when ya overclocking and running high drain CPU's, RAM and GPU's, especially when ya setting the voltages very high to get better overclocking results lol.

Just buy a goodun and ye will be fine. Id say for that setup, an Antec 400 would be just fine, but getting a 500 gives ye headroom for future expansion.

I've had this problem in the past, although not because of multiple auxiliaries, just due to crap PSUs.

I always make sure I have a decent one now.

I currently have a 480w one with
2 hard drives,
2 DVD-RW Drives
only the CPU fan to cool it (side of the case is constantly off instead)

Could be my next purchase as it will future proof into my next new pc build in about 3 - 6 months.

So I'm not loosing really

Max output up to 400 W < on the spec sheet for my comp - y the fuk i paid £830 for it tho (with 19" xerox screen) i dont know - me being impatient and pc world being convenient - nightmare

http://www.fujitsu-siemens.co.uk/Resources/155/1197215795.pdf

There is a

Manufacturer Warranty 5 years warranty

Would be worth it, although fortunatly, whilst CPU's are getting more powerful, their power drains are in general getting lower thanks to all this eco-friendly shite haha!

But it certainly leaves ye with a lot of headroom for play, if ye got summit like an cheap SLI/XFire setup off ebay for ye flight sim lol, it would demand at least 500w.

I'm seriously considering a 21 / 22" Monitor so this may as well
round the bill off to £200 lol