prophase_j, please can you name the make and model of your 480W (with 38 amp 5V rail) PSU?

I looked up the spec of my 450W PSU, and discovered that its 5V rail is only 20 amps. This Corsair VX450W PSU has been reviewed here -

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article751-page1.html

Amigaz wrote:

I'm gonna check what amp's it pushes out from the 5v line 😀

I'm very interested to see what you come up with.

retro games 100 wrote:

prophase_j, please can you name the make and model of your 480W (with 38 amp 5V rail) PSU?

It's an Antec True 480.

prophase_j wrote:

It's an Antec True 480. […]
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retro games 100 wrote:

prophase_j, please can you name the make and model of your 480W (with 38 amp 5V rail) PSU?

It's an Antec True 480.

That look exactly like my PSU I tested the mobo with at my last attempt but I think mine is just 350w

I found out to my dismay and horror that I had been running a Pentium 4 @2.4Ghz, with a Radeon 9700 Pro card, Creative Audigy 1 + its drive bay, 512mb RAM, etc using an AOpen 250W PSU. No wonder the whole thing made such a horrible groaning noise! I put up with that from Winter 2002 to about Spring 2006.

Actually, come to think of it, it's quite amazing the thing POSTed. But it did. Every single time. I played Morrowind plus its 2 expansion packs on it from start to finish. The Radeon 9700 Pro did die eventually, 4 years later.

Edit: This message above was in response to Swaaye's post, but after I clicked on the Submit button, that message had vanished!

Amigaz wrote:

That look exactly like my PSU I tested the mobo with at my last attempt but I think mine is just 350w

It all comes down to the amps you can supply on that rail. You can go back to some old posts here when I was first putting my rocket together, the problems I had with lockups and all. The first power supply I used was a 250 watt power supply from a P4 Dell. Not sure how many amps I had but It was only stable at 1.2ghz or so. It would boot at 1.5 but it wasn't stable, it would lockup after 10 minutes to a few hours. Then I got the Coolmax 400w, with it's 28 amp rail I'm able to run a Athlon XP-M at 1.67ghz on the 8KTA3. That power supply wasn't up to running the same chip at 1.8ghz on a MSI K3V, where I'm now using said Antec True 480.

Just checked my Antec SP-350P Smart Power 350w PSU

It has max 21 amp's on the 5v line

So this might be the cause my Epox board's doesn't post with any of the cpu's I've tried?
It feels odd that these old board's and cpu's needs this much juice 😵

I recommend old Enermax PSUs from the EG-xxx-P* series (e.g: EP-365P-VE). They have a fat 32 amp rating for the +5V rail.

This PSU has promising spec's:

It's for sale here at an online auction site...but it looks like a noname brand PSU 😜

Amigaz wrote:

Just checked my Antec SP-350P Smart Power 350w PSU

It has max 21 amp's on the 5v line.

So this might be the cause my Epox board's doesn't post with any of the cpu's I've tried?:

Looks like a smoking gun to me. Today I was rummaging through the closet and found the Dell power I had used, and it is rated for 22a. Looks like your just under the threshold.

5u3 wrote:

I recommend old Enermax PSUs from the EG-xxx-P* series (e.g: EP-365P-VE). They have a fat 32 amp rating for the +5V rail.

How about an Enermax NoiseMaker? 😉 (BTW, I can't find any used Antecs ATM.)

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/ca … 475AX-VE_1.html

Taken from the table near the bottom; bolded 2nd row item:

EG475AX-VE(G)/(W)
3.3v: 34A
5v: 40A
12v: 16A
12v: 15A

Total: 470W

Nice choice. One side effect of having massive 5v lines is that the 12v can be kinda weak. You could run into some issues with super high spec AGP cards, like x1650 or 7600gs and higher. In reality the rails of a power supply combine, but not at 100% efficiency. With that model, your good for about 24-26 amps on the 12v.

Check this out:

COOLMAX CX-550B 550W

+3.3V@30A
+5V@50A
-5V@.5A
+12V@35A
-12V@1A

The power supply I was using with a 28a rail was a 400w made by the same people. It's like a big brother.

Wow, now that's a proper retro PSU! 😀 It even has -5V! I did a quick browse online, and found an online retailer called megacomponents.com selling them. The thing is, they seem to have a London, UK "contact us" address, and I put one of these items in the shopping basket, and the cost including shipping charge is displayed in UK currency. The one thing that's stopping me from jumping at this opportunity, are the "failure reports" listed on the newegg.com website. But megacomponents.com seem to have a good selection of Coolmax PSUs...I think I'll browse through them...Thanks a lot for the heads up! 😀