Budget shuttle system power consumprion woes.

[nichorob]

Budget shuttle system power consumption woes.

Evening all,

Ive recently built a temporary budget Shuttle system whilst im saving for a new Vista / Direct X 10 machine. The specification is as follows:

Shuttle SK21G (200watt PSU as far as I know)
AMD Sempron 2800+
1Gb (2x512mb) PC3200 Geil Value RAM
Nvidia 128mb 6800 LE
160Gb Western Digital SATA Hard Disk
Pioneer DVR-111 DVD-RW Drive
Netgear Rangemax WiFi card

Everything is at stock speeds and temperatures seem to be adequate. Now my problem is with gaming, the system is only really used to play World of Warcraft and Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and very occasionally (not all the time) in a situation such as minimizing a game to look at a webpage then going back into the game, the system will crash. The screen goes blank and the monitor turns itself off and they only way to reset is to pull the power cord out of the back of the shuttle.

I think my problem lies with the system being underpowered, looking at the BIOS menu it seems my 12v rail sits between 11.6v-11.7v which I understand is too low, 5v rail is also slightly under.

So my question is, is there a graphics card that will suit my system in terms of power consumption but still be able to play the odd game?

Many thanks.

 

[Minstadave]

There's nothing in that spec that would suggest you're overloading your PSU, the Shuttle PSU should be more than upto that load.

 

[nichorob]

So your saying 11.6v to 11.7v on the 12v rail is adequate?

Sorry for posting on wrong forum.

 

[Tute]

The rule i personally use is that if it's out by >5%, it's a problem.

That means any lower than 11.4V, which you're inside of.

Plus there is no way that system should cause the shuttle PSU any problems.

 

[nichorob]

Hmm, any ideas what could be causing the problem then? Im 99% sure its not overheating. Also the way the system just dies would point to me at a power failure. Im confused!

 

[Bane]

Does holding the power button in for say 10 seconds not shut it down when its crashed? I'd turn the plug socket off at the wall instead of pulling out the power cord.

Won't be any good for gaming, but have you tried using the onboard graphics to see if alt tabing causes the same fault?