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Hello,

First let me say that I am not new to computers but I am by no means an average expert. I don't understand a lot of the technical terms and only know what I need to know in order to get my work done. I have an older Sony Vaio model PCV-RS420 that I am very happy with for my business needs. I am not a gamer. Recently, my old monitor died and I went out and purchased a 23 inch LCD Acer H233H. I soon found out I needed a new Video card for the new monitor to work at full resolution. So I purchased a Diamond S120 256MB DDR Radeon 9550 and installed it myself. The monitor looks great now, but not long after this, I notice my computer is running dramatically slower than before and has actually frozen a couple of times. I have a current paid version of AVG anti-virus + firewall installed, and no issues have been found. Someone at a PC store told me the problem is likely my power supply because the new monitor may require more juice and I do have a lot of external stuff connected to my PC. . And by the way, I upgraded the PC to full Ram capacity a while back to 2G RAM. I went to newegg to look for a power supply and realized I need help desperately as I am not familiar with all the technical jargon. There is something about RAILS that I have no idea about and could make a difference whether the PSU will help or not. I am sure this will be easy for most of you, but I need advice on which power supply to get and from what I have briefly seen, ANTEC seems like a good brand to go with. I would prefer to spend under $100.00. After a thorough search, all I can find for my Sony Vaio is a spec sheet offered by Sony.  I also want to note that this computer has EIGHT 2.0 USB slots and I use all of them as follows.

1. External hard drive for backups 2. Thermal printer 3. Digital Camera 4. Barcode Scanner 5. Flatbed Scanner 6. PDA cradle 7. Blackberry synch

8. Regular laser printer

This may be a big load on the computer's power supply I suppose?  Here is what the specs sheet states 

POWER REQUIREMENTS

100-120V 4.7A (50/60hz)

POWER MANAGEMENT

ACPI 1.0 Compliant

The computer also has a DVD+RW drive as well as a CD Rom drive and a floppy Disk drive.  The CPU is Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.80C GHz with Hyper-Threading Technology.

I hope I have given enough information, if not please let me know. I would like to order and replace the power supply as soon as possible.  Thank you all in advance for any advice.

 

Regards,

Jeremy

 

Well Jeremy I have been to many websites trying to find the specs on your present PSU, IE: Dimensions, Wattage and amperage and not even Sony has this info posted. So unless you can supply me with this info I am unable to assist you and maintain my peace of mind but what I can tell you is according to the Extreme PSU calculator 238 watts of power is all you need minimum 300 watts to leave you a safety net.

A 9550 should not be over taxing your PSU...

Running dramatically slower and freezing could be a sign that your CPU is overheating, make sure there aren't any cables blocking the fan of your CPU from spinning and make sure you didn't accidently unplug your CPU fan when you installed your new graphics card...  Also make sure that the CPU fan  is spinning and hasn't died... And then after all that, get some temp monitoring programs like SpeedFan so you can keep an eye on your temps.

If your temps are fine, download and run memtest , Let that run for a couple hours and it will tell you if there's a problem with your RAM..

All that external stuff doesn't really put a load on your PSU as the devices have their own power supply..  USB devices pull less than 0.5 amps of power at 5 volts, which is nothing..  

 

Way too early to conclude that you need a new PSU, in my opinion.

Thank you, I also looked quite a bit and could not find anything from Sony or anywhere. I may have to open up the PC and take out the power supply to get the specs. I'm not even sure what the wattage is on the current PSU. I purchased the computer in 2003 so it may have a PSU of 200 to 300 watts? I'm not sure that the norm was back then. Thanks again for your reply.

Jeremy

Thanks Sidicas, the computer is acting overall like a computer that does not have enough RAM, yet I am not doing anything new or extra that could cause  this. I upgraded the RAM to its max of 2GB a while ago and it was running beautifully. I will try your advice as I really don't want to spend money on something only to find out I didn't need to. Thanks again!

Jeremy

Hi Hoghauler,

I tried Sidicas suggestions above and everything came back fine, both fans are working and the memory test (I used the microsoft one, easier for me) all came back ok. When I opend the PC to check the fans, I took a picture of the PSU label and although there is a lot of information on it, there are two lines that may give you a clue as to whether I may need more power now that I am running the new monitor through the new video card mentioned in my original querry above.

OUTPUT 295.4 Watt Max

+5V & +3.3V Total Output Power Can't Exceed 165W

+12V  & +12VSP Total Output Power Can't Exceed 209W

Any idea? Thanks again or to anyone out there who may want to chime in.

Regards,

Jeremy

Well it looks like your old PSU should handle it no problem, the only possible though slim chance of anything going wrong would be if you had everything running at the same time and maxed out your CPU and GPU load and that would have to be done for several minutes before an overload would kick in and shut it down.