Low power supplies

How much is performance going to suffer if i'm using a power supply that's much too low?  I recently upgraded my families PC (Dell, sigh) with a Radeon X1550 (Yeah that's an upgrade on this machine) which is 400w recommended, but this pc only has 220w power supply.

I've noticed when I run games the CPU usage % goes up more than it did before, along with a few other problems.

All over i've heard that Dell power supplies are a bitch to replace, and since tigerdirect is having a big sale on them now it seems like the best time to find out.

Oh, about the pc.  3.1Ghz Pentium 4, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Radeon X1550, 220w power supply, WinXP

Performance won't suffer.  Your shit will just fail unexpectedly and possibly suffer damage.

DUDE YOU GOT A DELL
DUDE YOU GOT LOCKED INTO PROPRIETARY DESIGN
DUDE NOW YOUR DELL'S BITCH
GTFO

your old video card just probably bottlenecked your system, so the cpu didn't have all that much to do while gaming, which is why cpu usage is higher.

PC Power & Cooling sells some power supplies for Dell machines, they're not cheap but they make some of the best power supplies

... at least he didn't buy a HP.

Check your locl PC store. They can replace your PSU. 400w minimum.

AND DONT BUY A FUCKING DELL AGAIN! SLAP YOUR DUMBARSE PARENTS FOR ME!

lol im gunna buy a new PSU so i can has moer megahurts

>>1

open up your case and get teh model number/name of your psu
google it and get one according to the same characterisitcs as the firsst one but get more peripherals and stuff like this so you have room to upgrade

also i advise you to look at the +12v of your power supply. watts dont matter if your psu has a crap +12 rail since it delivers most power to your system. then check +5 and +3 rails


i dont think it makes a difference if your psu is dell or not because they buy their components from different companies

your rig will run but you risk a chance of damaging your components or motherboard. so its better to be safe than sorry

i brought a psu for a video card that i brought because mine was overheating, it only cost around 80 bucks and improved cooling tremendously in my system. card which was overheating to 130 celsius now only was 90

ic