appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-05, 14:11:

I have found a fairly clean 350W AOpen PSU from the early 2000s that has a 30A 5V rail.. It's only 8 bucks, maybe I should just buy it..

Keep in mind that AOpen got their PSUs from FSP. During the time when FSP used bottom of the barrel caps.

I never had issues with FSP power supplies. They are good in my book.

I usually go for Enermax EG series or an old Delta, as they tend to come with good quality capacitors. Theres better 5v-heavy power supplies than these, but all of them will need to be recapped, while these usually are good out of the box.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-05, 17:49:

I never had issues with FSP power supplies. They are good in my book.

Most are good, but some older ones were known to use bad caps. Other wise they are all good.

Good info ty

austinham wrote on 2020-05-05, 17:59:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-05, 17:49:

I never had issues with FSP power supplies. They are good in my book.

Most are good, but some older ones were known to use bad caps. Other wise they are all good.

I just replaced the very noisy ball bearing fan on a 300W FSP with a 30A 5V rail today using a cheap Xigmatek brushless fan, and it is incredibly silent now. I will confidently use it in my Socket A Duron1300/Voodoo3 Win98 system 😀

I will probably also buy the AOpen as a spare..

Dug thru the pile and found this old Delta: DPS-525AB. About the size of an old XT full PSU. Built 1995. Weighs about same as a gallon of milk 🤣. The fan is 6". Have not tried it in years so it probably does not work but it supplies some good Amps on the 5v and 3.3v. Was made for a full height AT tower. There is one for sale on ebay but is not mine (diff serial #)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Delta-Electronics-DP … 0-/283508664239

I keep shilling the FSP400-GHN, so I might do it again. Here it is running a 54W Duron 1200 and a Geforce3 ti200 (which is also using 5V).

I have a 650TX I purchased new back 2010 and I've kept and used consistently since, it runs my P3 1GHz system stable but only if I strap extra HDDs/optical drives to it, not sure if it's age causing the load balancing issues or what but it does work..

the CX450 I just purchased does not, however. boots fine but any stress and power's instantly cut, that's only 20A on the 5V though and I'm running a full smattering of cards in here so not entirely surprised, just disappointed.

TorqueDaisy wrote on 2020-05-20, 13:49:

I have a 650TX I purchased new back 2010 and I've kept and used consistently since, it runs my P3 1GHz system stable but only if I strap extra HDDs/optical drives to it, not sure if it's age causing the load balancing issues or what but it does work..

the CX450 I just purchased does not, however. boots fine but any stress and power's instantly cut, that's only 20A on the 5V though and I'm running a full smattering of cards in here so not entirely surprised, just disappointed.

If you don't mind me asking, what hardware do you have in that P3 ? I ask because I just bought an RM850x (25A each on 3.3V and 5V, 150W max combined) and am waiting on 20pin ATX adapter to install it in my P3 .
It only has 25% more on the 5V rail than the CX450 .

I currently have the following power-consuming parts:

- Pentium 3 Tualatin-S @1400MHz with 512K L2 cache
- Ipox 3ETI23 industrial motherboard (815EP-based with 3 ISA slots and onboard Fast Ethernet)
- 512 MB (2x256) of PC133 SDRAM
- MSI AGP Nvidia FX 5900
- 3Dfx Voodoo 3 3000 (PCI)
- 500GB Samsung 860EVO + JMD330 IDE to SATA adapter or Promise PCI SATA controller (have yet to decide) .
- 5 and 1/4" floppy drive
- 3 and 1/2" floppy drive
- LG GSA-4167 DVD-ROM drive
- Gravis Ultrasound Ultralsound 3.73 with 1 MB RAM
- Creative AWE64 Value with 28MB RAM (thanks to SIMMCONN revival)
- Mediatrix Audiotrix 3DXG (OPL3SA) with Monster Sound (Dream 9733 4MB GS ROM) daughterboard
- 3 case fans (12V ones so not worried about those) .
- USB keyboard
- PS/2 mouse

Not much, I'm not sure if the PSU itself is faulty or if this is an issue with the 5V rail:

Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X Socket 370
Pentium III @ 1GHz
GeForce 4 Ti4200
3dfx Voodoo2
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS
Creative Soundblaster 16 CT2230
Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80GB IDE HDD
Some no name DVD drive I pulled from a dead machine

Munx wrote on 2020-05-06, 14:29:

I keep shilling the FSP400-GHN, so I might do it again. Here it is running a 54W Duron 1200 and a Geforce3 ti200 (which is also using 5V).
P_20200506_172238.jpg

4.9v on the 5v rail? Isn't that kinda low?

Horun wrote on 2020-05-06, 04:09:

Dug thru the pile and found this old Delta: DPS-525AB. About the size of an old XT full PSU. Built 1995. Weighs about same as a gallon of milk 🤣. The fan is 6". Have not tried it in years so it probably does not work but it supplies some good Amps on the 5v and 3.3v. Was made for a full height AT tower. There is one for sale on ebay but is not mine (diff serial #)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Delta-Electronics-DP … 0-/283508664239

5.1V? That is interesting, I've not seen that before.

austinham wrote on 2020-05-20, 14:24:

4.9v on the 5v rail? Isn't that kinda low?

Not really, better than +/- 5% regulation is perfectly fine on an ATX PSU.

Besides, motherboard sensors are not particularly accurate to begin with.

canthearu wrote on 2020-05-20, 14:26:

austinham wrote on 2020-05-20, 14:24:

4.9v on the 5v rail? Isn't that kinda low?

Not really, better than +/- 5% regulation is perfectly fine on an ATX PSU.

Besides, motherboard sensors are not particularly accurate to begin with.

True. Motherboard sensors never are all too accurate.

TorqueDaisy wrote on 2020-05-20, 14:18:

Not much, I'm not sure if the PSU itself is faulty or if this is an issue with the 5V rail: […]
Show full quote

Not much, I'm not sure if the PSU itself is faulty or if this is an issue with the 5V rail:

Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X Socket 370
Pentium III @ 1GHz
GeForce 4 Ti4200
3dfx Voodoo2
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS
Creative Soundblaster 16 CT2230
Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80GB IDE HDD
Some no name DVD drive I pulled from a dead machine

These add up to 79W (though Voodoo 2 and Geforce 4 would not be used at the same time), or 64W without the Voodoo 2 :
Voodoo has a TDP of 15W, all 5V (who knows how much at idle, though my Voodoo 3 does get hot at idle)
Geforce 4 TI has a TDP of 35W according to some sources
P3 has a TDP of 29W

The drives draw power mostly from 12V .

Sound cards are probably 3.3V/5V at likely something under 10W each .

Add the mainboard, possibly 5V CPU fan , keyboard, mouse, etc And you are probably quite close to that 110W on 3.3V +5.5V

I believe it. the TX-650W runs it all OK with 30 on the 3.3/5 but it doesnt POST until I start strapping extra drives to it, fun times.

TorqueDaisy wrote on 2020-05-20, 15:29:

I believe it. the TX-650W runs it all OK with 30 on the 3.3/5 but it doesnt POST until I start strapping extra drives to it, fu […]
Show full quote

I believe it. the TX-650W runs it all OK with 30 on the 3.3/5 but it doesnt POST until I start strapping extra drives to it, fun times.

My guess is it wants a minimum load on the 12V before it's happy enough flip power-good to ON .

I wonder if I will have the same issue with the RM850x . My P3 system has practically no 12V load .

Oh, and I realized I have a Kill-a-watt type power meter .
I ran Prime95 , then I ran 3DMARK 2001 at 1600x1200 .

The highest load was when running 3DMARK 2001: at wall socket I got 160W using an old Enermax EG465P-VE (35A each on 3.3 and 5V and 200W combined). Assuming an 80% 70% (optimistic) efficiency rating, I should be OK with the PSU providing about 128W 112W or less . I should be OK with the RM850x, except if I have the same issue as you do with the TX-650W ( I don't feel like throwing in more drives) .

Your setup being similar to mine (except my higher power draw Fx 5900), I am not surprised the TX-650W mostly works for you (excect the extra drive "ballast" requirement).

EDIT : My EG465P-VE variant (there are at least 3) has 70% efficiency at full load according to an old Bjorn3d review . https://bjorn3d.com/2003/07/enermax-eg465p-ve … c-power-supply/

EDIT2 : All things considered, that CX450 probably should have been able to handle the load of your system .

I actually need to test that CX450 more before I call it problematic, it seems HWInfo32 is causing the entire machine to shut off whenever it accesses the sensors even with the 650W power supply installed, so it might not be related. I'll report back with what I find out tonight.

TorqueDaisy wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:42:

I actually need to test that CX450 more before I call it problematic, it seems HWInfo32 is causing the entire machine to shut off whenever it accesses the sensors even with the 650W power supply installed, so it might not be related. I'll report back with what I find out tonight.

Good luck with your setup .

Short of getting a PSU with voltage monitoring, having a Kill-a-watt type device is actually quite useful I find . I can even deduce a component's total idle power draw by measuring with and without it installed . For 20 Canadian dollars, it seems like a good deal . I got a Nashone one, but they are sold under many brands .

darry wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:57:

Good luck with your setup .

Thank you! I did just run 3dmark 2000 just for the sake of giving it a go around with the 650W one and it's absolutely fine so I'd imagine if it can do the same under the CX450 then it's definitely a software issue. I'll have to sidle on over to the HWInfo thread and post my findings there in that case.

EDIT:

That does seem to be the case but it's still a bit iffy whether it's stable or not. I'm gonna send it back regardless.