New Power Supply for old PC

[clonmult]

Step sons PC has started playing up a bit, and I reckon its most likely to be the power supply finally on its last legs.

Its an old machine, ATX Asus P2B mobo, 550mHz PIII.

I'm figuring that either of these would work on it :

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/120673

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136630

But I'm not sure the mobo PSU connectors are going to be the same?

[jimmyjimjim]

Open the case and have a look.

I suspect that given the age, the 20 pin ATX connector is what you need; the 20+4 pin connector is a 20 pin connector with an additional 4 pin cable that attaches to the side of the main 20 pin connector to make it the more recent 24 pin standard.

The additional 4 pin ATX connector mentioned is used on some motherboards in addition to the main 20/24 pin jobbie; IIRC only used by P4's and above for additional power to the CPU, I don't think you'll need it.

I Think either of the 2 links would do you fine; go for the 400w as it's only another quid.

Check the number of molex (HDD/CDROM) connectors you need - 3 seems a little low.

[clonmult]

jimmyjimjim said:

Open the case and have a look.

I suspect that given the age, the 20 pin ATX connector is what you need; the 20+4 pin connector is a 20 pin connector with an additional 4 pin cable that attaches to the side of the main 20 pin connector to make it the more recent 24 pin standard.

The additional 4 pin ATX connector mentioned is used on some motherboards in addition to the main 20/24 pin jobbie; IIRC only used by P4's and above for additional power to the CPU, I don't think you'll need it.

I Think either of the 2 links would do you fine; go for the 400w as it's only another quid.

Check the number of molex (HDD/CDROM) connectors you need - 3 seems a little low.

Ta; figured that was about it - only need connectors for 1xHDD and 1xCDROM. Its an even spec machine though - PII 550, 384meg of ram (yah, nowhere near enough really), XP SP3, 128meg ATI PCI graphics card ... but he purely uses it for Runescape.

Couldn't really just open it up - its my (ex) step sons PC, and I'm only there ever saturday, so had to go on memory. I should have realised that something was up with the PSU when I had it for a week to install XP on it - virtually every time I opened the CD tray the blasted thing went and powered down. Now even without the CD connected it just reboots periodically.

[bigdods]

Maybe consider investing in a new PC as other things will break. I recently picked up two second hand Pentium 4 3ghz pcs from ebay with XP, 1GB ram , one with on board graphics the other with a 256MB AGP graphics card, about £90 each including shipping.