Does anyone know of a good guide or calculator for ATX power supplies. Have just built a new DVR (Digital Video Recorder) and I think my PSU is causing me problems. System jams, reboots or corrupts the screen giving message that windows files are corrupted (which they aren't). At one stage it kept stuffing my AGP card giving an error that the drivers could not be loaded, but was fine when I removed the A/V capture cards. I am currently running a 300W PSU but have just ordered a 500W one just in case. The system is as follows;

19' Rackmount 4U case (300W PSU)
Asus P4B533 motherboard
512mb PC2100 Amicroe DDR ram (1x512)
Chaintech 64mb Geforce 4 MX440 AGP
Three (3) Western Digital 200GB 8mb cache HDD
Lite-On 52x52x24 CD-RW
1.44mb floppy drive
120mm Case Cooling fan
Three (3) 50mm case cooling fans
and
Four (4) VG4C-RT Cards (Realtime 4 channel video/audio capture cards with 2 cooling fans on each and external power connectors using HDD plugs)

If anyone knows of a good guide, calculator, has had a similar experience or knows something that may help I would greatly appreciate it !

Regards,
Bane66

You can never have too much power.

300W would normally be OK but you have some powerful kit running there, could be a valid cause of it being unstable. 350W I would say minimum, 400-500W far more sensible. I had problems running a 300W PSU on my 1700+ XP so I went for 400W (or 450W, can't remember), system is far more stable now.

I know of a site with a guide to adding up the total power usage of all the kit in your system.... just trying to find it for you.

I can't find the article I came across last time but heres something to give you a rough guide
http://www.howstuffworks.com/power-supply3.htm

Thanks, looking at it now !

Actually I think this is a better guide
http://www.pcpowercooling.com/maxpc/index_cases.htm

Just use the max wattage that they give for everything, or the middle if you have several of something (i.e. pci cards). That way you should come up with an estimated PSU value that would adequately do you.

Thanks once more !
I did a conservative and max type of calculation and guessing at the A/V cards consumption I get a figure of around 380W (with no margin for error of safety factor) so I guess I will need the 500W PSU I have ordered !

Regards,
Bane66

NB; The whole thing would have been easier if the supplier/manufacturer we buy the A/V cards from sent me the specifications for the cards and system requirements as I had originally asked, but hey....you get that !

Thanks again !

No problem.

It's always best to err on the side of more rather than less when it comes to power, good not to be using 100% of the power supply too. For a high performance system 400W should be the minimum.

You cant go wrong with 500 though

FREDDY

i picked up an Antec TP 400Watt PSU the other day and my system seems to run a little bit more stable with it. So you are always better getting about 100W more than you need at the time so you can add things to your case/board.