Opinion needed - replace my power supply?

[njwordy]

Hello all, sorry for the long post, bear with me:

I built a microATX system for my parents 2 years ago, and it recently ran into some problems. It began to detect problems with its hard drive, which slowly built in frequency, until it became unusable. My dad bought another drive, which had the same problem. I reinstalled the OS, which did not help, trying both drives. We began to suspect the drive controller on the motherboard, so we replaced the MB with a new gigabyte MB, and ran into the same problems (unable to install the OS at this point, tried Vista and W7) with wiped and reformatted partitions for the install. The errors were different every time, but always focused on corrupted information or integrity checking errors.

At this point I replaced all of the components in the case, except for the motherboard (the new one) and processor, with parts from my own computer - no luck again! After running some drive diagnostics, we found that the new drive was junk - tons of bad sectors, and unable to repair them. I went back to the original drive, and it worked! I then re-installed the computers original components, except for the power supply, and it was stable.

So at this point, I put the old power supply back in, and sealed it up. Working perfectly right now.

What I'm worried about is the power supply. It is admittedly on the edge in terms of capacity (350 watts) and I have no experience with the Sparkle brand. I think it's a possibility that the power supply is what led to the busted MB disk controller, and I'm also wondering if this in turn destroyed the hard drive. On the other hand, it's been running strong for two years. From what I can gather, my dad was doing some video editing when It first died, but was pretty much idling all other times.

Am I risking destruction here? Any ideas on ways I can confirm the reliability of this power supply would be appreciated.

Thanks


Lian-Li MicroATX case (temperatures are fine)
Sparke ATX-350PA ps
ASUS P5B-VM DO mb (original)
Gigabyte GA-EG41M-US2H mb (new one)
Intel E4400 c2d
Wintec 2x1gb DDR2-800
XFX Nvidia 8600GT
Wireless card, Disc drive

 

[obsidian86]

http://www.antec.outervision.com/PSUEngine use this an add 20%

 

[hunter315]

I would definitely bet on PSU and the since you dont need much power for the 8600 GT a Corsair 400CX should be plenty of power, it provides more than that sparkle PSU did new
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139008

PSU's lose capacity as they age so its likely starting to fail, that corsair one is good and cheap, its very hard to beat at that price point especially after rebate

 

[njwordy]

Thanks, that's an excellent site. I gave it an extra internal and external hard drive for good measure, and with an extra 20% tacked on, comes out to 200 watts.

Thanks for the link as well Hunter, I like corsair stuff
At that price, it might be worth it to just get it and have peace of mind.

 

[hunter315]

I wouldnt suggest dropping down anywhere near that low though, PSUs get sketchy below about 350, almost no good brand makes one that low and the corsair 400CX is the cheapest one you can get from a good brand and actually beats some 450 watt PSUs from cheaper brands.

 

[njwordy]

Oh, wouldn't dream of it - Just seeing what they think it needs. I was worried about the 350 when I built it. I had trouble finding specs that listed dimensions on the small case and power supplies at the time, and you would think from the reviews on the case that barely anything would fit! Somebody name-dropped the sparkle, so I went with that one to be sure. I was kinda surprised when we started swapping components between my comp and this one that my OCZ 600 fits perfectly...

 

[hunter315]

the total power of that graphics card is only 50 watts so it really doesnt need much power, combine that with a 65 watt processors so for once that number seems about right, you probably spend more on lighting in your computer room than on the computer's power. I thought that was a pretty low number but after a bit of checking it looks about right.

Yeah most cases will take a normal ATX PSU unless its one of the weird HTPC or ITX cases which makes life alot easier when one starts to die, it makes for quick swaps.