Power supply wattages

Have a client that is experiencing random lockups. Posted this before but thought I would start a new thread because my thinkng on the problem has changed

The system locks up totally at random. They arent multitasking or anything like that. It is at a place of business, however. The lockups have been occuring basically since they got the system over a year ago. It is not program specific

I thought it may be the way the system was built and loaded in the first place. The issue has been occuring pretty much since they got the machine. The hard drive was cloned instead of reloaded clean. That can be a problem

The relevant specs are
PIII 500 cpu
ASUS P5 99 mbd
256 megs ram recently upgraded from 128 since memory is so cheap
Iomega Zip Internal 250
TBU. Originally had a Conner 250 & I recently upgraded it to a Seagate 4/8 gig
250 watt power supply
98SE

I backed everything up formatted & reloaded clean. I also moved the Zip from a slave to the HDD as it appeared that the system would lock when the Zip was used. Iomega gracioulsy replaced it. Not the problem

The way it is jumpered now is that the cdrom slaves off the hdd on the primary controller. The Zip is the master & TBU the slave on the secondary. That should be fine

I think that the system is underpowered with a 250 watt power supply. The parts store that I get my stuff from says that a PIII requires a minimum of a 300 watt power supply, 350 is preferred

If this is the case, and with all of these devices attached, I can see where power is an issue. That has been my though after I reloaded it anyway

Can anyone confirm my thinking?
Any thoughts?

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Keep it simple!

New power supply is about 30 to 35 bucks. Cheap & easy thing to replace.....

I posted this for someone else. Maybe it will help.

High-wattage AGP card 20 - 30W +3.3V
Average PCI card 5W +5V
Cached SCSI controller PCI card 20-25W +3.3V and +5V
Floppy drive 5W +5V
10/100 NIC 4W +3.3V
50x Atapi CD-ROM 10 - 25W +5V and +12V
10x Atapi DVD-ROM 10 - 25W +5V and +12V
8x / 4x / 32x SCSI CD-R/RW 17W +5V and +12V
SCSI CD-ROM 12W +5V and +12V
RAM 10W per 128MB +3.3V
Ultra2 SCSI PCI card 5W +3.3V and +5V
5200rpm IDE hard drive 5 - 11W +5V and +12V
7200rpm IDE hard drive 5 - 15W +5V and +12V
7200rpm Ultra2 SCSI hard drive 24W +5V and +12V
10,000rpm SCSI drive 10 - 40W +5V and +12V
Motherboard (without CPU or RAM) 20 - 30W +3.3V and +5V
550MHz Pentium III 30W +5V
733MHz Pentium III 23.5W +5V
300MHz Celeron "A" 18W +5V
600MHz Athlon 45W +5V or +12V

Random failures as you describe can indicate a heat problem. Is this an issue?


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[This message has been edited by greengoose1 (edited 06-28-2001).]