GeForce 210 in a Lenovo H430?

[Byron Hawkins]

I have a Lenovo H430 which has the world's wimpiest power supply, providing 280 watts which are nearly all consumed by essential components. This was not a problem until I got a 30" monitor, which the onboard graphics cannot support. So I got the lowest-power card I could find that supports 2560x1600, which is an EVGA GeForce 210. The box says it requires a 300 watt PSU, but there is theoretically just enough power on the specific line connected to the card. It works for a few hours, then the screen freezes. Is this because of power consumption? Is there a way I can find out specifically what's causing the freeze? Thanks for your help.

 

[cst1992]

Depending on how much current the +12V rail of your power supply can provide, it may happen that the PC freezes(or shuts down) when the card begins to draw max power.
You don't have the world's wimpiest power supply; in fact there are guys that have 180W power supplies; however those are not meant to be used in gaming systems.
It may also be a fault caused due to a particular application causing a driver to crash. When does it crash usually?

 

[Byron Hawkins]

I only tried it for a couple days, and it never froze while I was using the machine. Normally I leave it on for ssh access from home overnight, and when I got back in the morning, the screen was frozen and the machine did not respond to anything. Is this a normal symptom of insufficient power?

 

[cst1992]

Can't really say anything unless it is known where the screen froze. There's not just one reason of this happening.