Not All Power Supplies Are Created Equal

Last night I set out to upgrade a customer's PC from their two year old technology to a more high performance computer more typical of today, only to be stopped dead in my tracks by a power supply. What a bummer!

You see, I transplanted their old Socket A motherboard (mainboard) with a new Socket 939 one and installed a new AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ Dual Core processor (CPU) to replace their old AMD Athlon 2800+, and 1GB (2x512) PC3200 DDR400 Dual Channel memory kit (instead of their 512MB PC2700 DDR333 memory).

When I went to plug the power into the motherboard I noticed the cable's connector was a little shorter than the motherboard's. I thought I was seeing things, but then I read in the manual that this motherboard was designed for a 24 pin (EATX) power supply (instead of the 20 pin ATX one in the system, which has been the more common one).

At first I tried to see if it would fit, and it sure did, into the first 20 pins. This made me wonder if the P4 4-pin connector was meant to fit into the last 4 pins, but I quickly dismissed that notion because the motherboard also had the standard P4 connector. Then I wondered if an adapter existed (there's one for every situation imagineable), and there was, which would save me buying a new power supply.

Upon closer reading I discoverd that the 20-pins would work with this motherboard connector, but there was one condition - the +12V value had to be at least 15 amps. So I quickly looked at the rating guide on the power supply hoping it would be, but my hopes were dashed as it was only rated for 13 amps, and the back-up one in my shop was rated even lower, and another one that I could have swapped from another customer's system was too low as well. So much for the adapter solution. Darn it all.

I resolved myself to having to wait another day before I could complete this upgrade and test drive my first dual-core system. Oh well...

I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, and remember - Live it, Live!

Troy Roach

OnSite Technology

519-40-GEEKS

519-404-3357

www.onsitetechnology.ca

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