PSU power affect performance?

[gostumpy]

Hello!


Quick question...

My 300w PSU seems to have died, computer would not POST at all, light came on but thats it. CPU fan came on, HDD made some noise, but nothing on the screen and no beeps.

Installed a 250w PSU I had in a spare computer, and now the computer works fine (on it currently) except it is slow as balls sometimes, opening browser windows, start menu, stuff like that.

Can the PSU be making my computer slow?

Could that be why it has been slow, my PSU was dying slowly???

Thanks!
Tyler

 

[gostumpy]

Dying PSU could also be why my DVD burner screws up often?

 

[jsc]

"Can the PSU be making my computer slow? " No. As long as you have enough power to post and boot, you have enough power - unless you are doing 3D stuff. Power demands of a modern video at least double when shifting from a 2D desktop to a 3D gaming load. So a flaky or inadequate PSU might work until you try to play a game. Usual symptom is seemingly random reset/reboots during 3D games.

"Dying PSU could also be why my DVD burner screws up often? " Now, that's possible.

 

[Paperdoc]

While I agree with jsc, it is vaguely possible for a marginal PSU to cause this IF the system keeps encountering errors in certain components that are temporarily "fixed" by automatic re-trys. The best proof would be to replace with a different PSU of at least 300W capacity, even if only temporarily, to see if that helps.

There is also the possibility that some other part of your system is faulty and causing this, and may even have caused trouble for the original PSU.

 

[gostumpy]

Well after the initial bootup with the old 250w PSU slowness, it actually runs really smooth. Seems to be working flawlessly, actually... Haven't tried to use the DVD burner yet though.

Funny that this all happened when I restarted after installing my onboard video drivers...

Now video runs smooth as butter, before it was choppy as all hell!