Ok, new question. I am going to replace the supply. After like 4 hours of chasing dell support who know nothing about hardware upgrades, I figured out what type i need to buy. Through googling for forums like this one.
I need a standard ATX power supply with a 24pin or 20+4pin connector and the little 4 pin cpu connector. Dell learned from their old proprietary PSUs.
But, the dell support people told me that if i put a power supply of more than 300watts into my pc it will burn up the mother board! I could see this is true if i put maybe a 800w power supply in there. WTF is that? I hope this guy didn't know what he was talking about.
To be honest i thought that mother boards weren't rated on watts, so you can use a 800w power supply with any mother board as long as you are using the watts. (mabey like 5 hard disks and dual 8800's in sli)
Another thing that occurred to me is mabey he meant temperature wise too high a power PSU might make the case too hot.
Original Post
I need a standard ATX power supply with a 24pin or 20+4pin connector and the little 4 pin cpu connector. Dell learned from their old proprietary PSUs.
But, the dell support people told me that if i put a power supply of more than 300watts into my pc it will burn up the mother board! I could see this is true if i put maybe a 800w power supply in there. WTF is that? I hope this guy didn't know what he was talking about.
To be honest i thought that mother boards weren't rated on watts, so you can use a 800w power supply with any mother board as long as you are using the watts. (mabey like 5 hard disks and dual 8800's in sli)
Another thing that occurred to me is mabey he meant temperature wise too high a power PSU might make the case too hot.
Original Post
I recently bought a dell inspiron 531, nice machine (2gb ram, amd athlon 64 x2 5000+)
Cost me 309.99 from their outlet.
But I am having issues with the power in the case! It is not that it doesn't work, it is that the power supply is a piece of garbage. In the case there are 4 SATA power connectors, a 4pin minimolex floppy connector, and the normal ones the mobo uses. 3 of the sata power connectors are in use by the drives. That leaves 1 sata power connector and the annoying 4 pin. My issue lies in the fact that I need power to a graphics card I bought. It requires either a 6 pin PCIe power connector or 2 standard 4 pin molex connectors.
This leaves me with several cumbersome options:
1. Get 2 sata->4pin connectors and a sata y pin to power the cd/dvd drives.
Are these Y splitters safe? It could burn out a wire or my power supply I have read.
2. Get a sata->4pin connector and some sort of 4pin mini to 4pin molex adapter.
Do they even make connectors to go from mini 4 pin to the 4pin molex?
Because it's the mini connector does it mean it has less power?
3. Buy a whole new power supply.
I have been looking around on newegg.com, and I saw this one.
Newegg.com - Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC ATX 430W Power Supply 115/ 230 V - Retail
it has all the pins i am looking for and has a very high rating to boot.
4. Get 2 sata->4pin connectors and not use one of my DVD/CD drives.
This seems cheapest and easiest to do. But it will bite me in the butt next time I want to copy a cd/dvd. Mabey by then we will all use HDDVD or blu-ray.
Another issue is finding sata->4pin connectors. Apparently everybody is supposed to have 4pin connectors to spare! Why does dell have to decide that I don't need any?!
Does anybody have an opinion on what I should do? I don't know much about all the motherboard power supply stuff. (Heck, it's because I have always had enough connectors!)
If you need more info or want pictures or something just ask. I am very willing to help you to help me!
