What will happen if my Power Supply is not powerful enough

[bigteduk]

Will haveing too small a PSU cause my computer to fail to start or will it just cause instabillity in the system after start-up?

 

[SYAR2003]

Hi!
Depends on how much its overloaded i guess ,and
if it has overload protection so it doesn't burn out.

There is sites i know of to do a calculation
of the PSU needs.
Here's the one i like best

http://www.challenge-my.com/goopsulator/

There is an article at Tom's Hw stress testing PSU's
might want to read that.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/index.html

 

[SYAR2003]

Sorry !
On the issue of what happens .
Usually the first symptoms are that the vcore voltage will start dropping and fluctuating .Causing the cpu to misbahave as it's getting undervolted in intervals .
This causes instability/restarts/freezes and
memory instructions errors and simular things.

 

[jbotz]

That does sound like a power supply problem. You might want tot replace it anyway, as power supplies are not very expensive. If you listed your PC specs, it would be fairly easy to determine if your power supply is under-rated for your application. Post back and let us know.

-J