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

Visit my other blog "Site of the Month" for my picks of the internet's best web sites, links and technology.

New "Site of the Month" Blog

Today I launched a new monthly blog where I will post my

"Site of the Month"

Every week I spend many, many hours surfing the internet for products, news, reviews, events, trends, origins, the history and the future of technology and computing.

Each month I will post a link there to a new, cool, hot, fun, interesting or useful site that I think everyone should check out. Not every site every month will be of interest to everyone, but you never know, so check it out.

I am committed to safe surfing on the internet, so you can trust that any link I post there (or on any of my blogs) is 100% genuine and will not cause any pop-ups, spyware or viruses.

So why not take a moment and check out the new Site of the Month!

Thanks, and remember - Live it, Live!

Troy Roach
OnSite Technology
519-40-GEEKS
519-404-3357
www.onsitetechnology.ca

ICANN but I won't!

Is there a conspiracy plot in the works?

ICANN (the international governing body for internet domains names) has given VeriSign the approval to increase the price of .COM domain names over the next several years.

How interesting that one of ICANNs board members is Google's cheif internet guru. Hmmm...

In a world where the price of domain names has only come down year over year, this seems an injustice.

As it is the choices for short .COM domain names are very limited, and with more and more top level domains (TLD) being added - like the most recent .ws (which stands for "web site") many people may choose to purchase a short, excellent and easy to remember domain name using an alternative extensioin.

For example, if someone wanted the web site "Computer Tech Support" they would find that the .com version is already taken, but www.computertechsupport.ws is not. This is exactly what I did. I get an easy to remember web site name, just with a different extension.

I just purchased a .tv domain name and it was $20, but for now .com names can still be had for as little as $4.95 (www.netfirms.com), and why not? If I am going to pay a premium for a domain name it better be for a unique name that is as short as possible. If the price were to go up significantly for a .com I certainly would be looking at different extensions instead.

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

Troy Roach
OnSite Technology
519-404-3357
www.onsitetechnology.ca

Visit my other blog "Site of the Month" for my picks of the internet's best web sites, links and technology.