First post, by Scythifuge
- Rank
- Oldbie
Greetings,
In this thread: P3 PC rebooting in the middle of the boot sequence I had an issue with a PC that rebooted, gave beep codes, and then would only give a blinking LED without beep codes. After reading information and recommendations from very helpful individuals, I tried a different PSU, despite the fact that the PSU I was using was an Antec NOS PSU.
The thing is, I have a lot of components/peripherals with more to add or change. I am going to list what I have and what I want to add, and I am asking the community for recommendations for a PSU (the newer the better) that I can safely use to power this retro beast.
The parts:
1. Asus P2B (looking for a slotket and 1.4Ghz P3 Tualatin, or replace it with a mobo that natively supports the Tualatin and 133 fsb)
2. Pentium III 550
3. 128mb RAM
4. Voodoo 5 5500 AGP
5. Orchid Voodoo2 12mb (with plans to add another one for SLI)
6. Typhoon Voodoo 4mb
7. Sound Blaster Live! (original release)
8. Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP (with plans to replace with Awe64 Legacy with Dreamblaster X2 )
9. Creative DVD 5x
10. Creative CD-RW
11. 5.25 floppy drive
12. 3.5 floppy drive
13. 128GB SSD with SATA/IDE adapter (master)
14. CF/IDE adapter in 3.5 bay (slave; for swapping different cards due to 128GB limitation until I can figure out how to use rloew's TBPLus Package)
15. Live! Drive
Connected peripherals are a parallel port SuperDisk drive, Creative 4.1 speakers, a NOS 19" KDS (what a find!) and an optical mouse with a generic beige keyboard (though I am looking for a KB with a smaller form factor in beige/white.)
I had an SCC-1 in there, but it wasn't in the machine when the issue occurred, and will not be needed once I have an AWE64 Legacy w/ Dreamblaster (which I will use to connect an MT-32 and an external SC-55,) and I will then add a NIC in the ISA slot, and use an external 56k V.92 modem for BBSing and experimenting.
The PSU that failed was NOS Antec that ran for a total of maybe 6-10 hours before failure, though I have been told and read that caps can rot just sitting around. This is a passion project that has taken along time to put together, so I haven't had a chance to do a final install of everything and play any games. When the PSU failed, I was in the middle of formatting a pile of 50 5.25 floppies. I had to disconnect and change up the power connections because my floppy drives either wouldn't work, or were acting strange, so I put the V5 on another line.
I am looking for a PSU that will work for this crazy build. I have read that I need a lot of amps on +5 and 3.3, and that most newer PSUs do not provide this. Buying something NOS or used is always a risky business. The V5 is my 2nd one, as the 1st one I acquired from an ebay seller needed to be returned due to artifacts (was listed as tested and working.) Since this issue occurred and after reading comments here and on other forums, I am worried about hooking up an inadequate PSU and frying these components - they are getting expensive and harder to find (which is still why I don't have a V2 SLI set up yet.) Interesting to note that I have read that the extra passthru cables add noise, but my screen looks pristine with the 1ft VGA extension cables with filters I am using.
I am interested in everyone's recommendations! Bonus if there is a suitable PSU that is modular. If I have to, I am willing to buy SATA to Molex adapters.
EDIT: I forgot that adalbert mentioned this in that thread: "You have a lot of 5V-heavy stuff here," so I guess that barring recommendations, I need to look for a PSU with as many amps on the +5v that I can find?
EDIT 2: BitWrangler suggested 40A on 5V for a build like this.