Have I overpowered my powersupply

[Robotnik]

My system has been blue screen crashing a bit lately (WinXP Pro) and I was wondering if my power-supply might be overpowered. Nothing is overclocked, but the warmer summer weather these days might be partly at fault too. Anyway, I have a mid tower case with a generic 300W powersupply. The details of the system are as follows:

AthlonXP 1800+ CPU
Iwill XP333-R ALi MagiK1 mainboard
768MB PC2100 DDR RAM
2x Quantum 7200RPM 80GB EIDE drives in RAID 0
1x Samsung 7200RPM 80GD EIDE drive off the primary controller
2x Generic 100BastTx PCI NICs
1x NEC addin USB 2.0 PCI card
1x Geforce4 Ti4200 AGP card w/128MB RAM
1x JLMS LTD-166S 16x DVD-ROM
1x MSI CR40-A CDRW
1x Memorex 52Maxx CDRW

Does it look overloaded or what? It probably is, but I'd better run it past you hardware experts, before I go out and buy a pricey new powersupply.

[sonyman]

What is the temperature of your Athlon? When they get hot, they are known to cause BSODs. Also, it very well could be your power supply. Being generic, it probably isn't putting out more than 250W or so. With a quality PS, such as one from Vantec, Enermax, or Antec, you can suck more power than the rating. I am currently sucking over 550W out of my 400W Antec (the older kind, NOT the TruePower) with only minor problems.

Try using MBM5 to get an accurate temperature reading: http://www.ocaddiction.com/downloads/utilities/mbm/mbm5210.zip.

-Scott

[Dartman]

That video card is pretty power hungry too. I have a similar one and I had to replace the mother board, a Asus a7v133, with a MSI kt3 ultra ARU and the card and windows stopped rebooting and having heating problems.
I'm running a bunch of gear in mine also but all I replaced was the board and memory, I'm still using the Antec 300 watt that came with my case.
Some boards don't regulate the AGP voltage very well either, thats what My old one must have been doing.
Borrow a known good PS and see if it clears it up, if it doesn't maybe the board doesn't like the video card or other hardware.
You might also have to slow down the memory timings in the bios and see if that helps a bit also.
Could be a lot of things, but I'd bet on those 2 right off.

[jerome_horwitz]

Very well could be, I have a similar system but with a GF3 Ti200 and without (at the time) a CD-RW, DVD, or 2nd Raid HD.

I was experiencing lockups in games. I replaced my generic (came with a Foxconn Supercase) 300 watt with a Herlochi AGI-U400 and haven't looked back. Since replacement I've not had one more lockup. This is going on about a month and I game frequently.

JMO though.