The Power Supply, although not a very glamorous component inside your computer is one of the most critical. It has 3 rails that support the various componentry of your computer, the 3.3V, 5V, and 12V rail. Sounds like your increase in drives, video cards, and RAM really put a serious strain on your PSU. I switched out the PSU in my Dell for just this very same issue. For what its worth, only PC Power & Cooling in Carlsbad, CA makes OEM replacements for Dell PSU's. The Turbo Cool 475 by PC Power & Cooling also scored the lowest in emitting heat in a comparison test between 18 PSU's, never getting above 26C. http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1841 http://www.pcpowercooling.com/
At the Cbot, I always would have seperate systems for each program. I found with newer computers you can run more than one trading program on each computer no problem. TT used to always say have it on a seperate system. I don't anymore. Good to see I am not the only one. Newer systems have enough horsepower and ram to run a few seperate programs.
dell/hp/etc... computers arent meant to have upgraded components in the box... adding graphics cards, memory... all a bad idea for a propritery system. also, that must be an extremely cheap psu. a 1/2 decent one will have overload protection.
Not at all. That particular Turbo-Cool 475 PSU went for $150.00 back in 2003. All three rails have OV protection and OC protection is listed at 135% The +5V rail was rated at 32A The +3.3V rail was rated at 28A The +12V rail was rated at 26A The newer Turbo-Cool 510 ATX runs $189.00 It's +5V rail is rated at 40A The +3.3V rail is rated at 30A And the +12V rail is rated at 34A Pretty powerful stuff!
Yeah, it was obviously a sub-par PSU. It was going through a death rattle last week, but the PSU wasn't giving me any indications. I thought a bios upgrade was in order, but the mobo is an ECS, and they're notoriously bad mobos. Good riddance, Microcenter.