# how to monitor your power supply output



## captainbarred (May 2, 2005)

Hey guys, I have a home-built PC that I put together 2 years or so ago. I got an Antec case with an Antec 400 watt power supply.

I have in it 2 7200RPM hard drives, 2 cd drives, 1 floppy, and of course the mobo plugs in to the power supply.

My PC runs hot so I picked up a few fans to help out. I currently have 2 80mm fans(going to be 3 soon), the CPU fan, a fan on my vid card(runs from mobo power through the PCI slot) a back slot fan and both hard drives have fans hard drive fans attached to them.

my question is how do you tell when you start getting to the max output of your power supply?? is there a way to monitor the output?

I honestly wouldnt mind getting a new one, a nice quiet one, but would prefer to not spend the money...

Any suggestions?


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## please (Mar 2, 2005)

@ captainbarred
check out the Seasonic Power Angel. This will show how much power your PSU is drawing from the wall, but not how much your system is drawing from the PSU. A little math and guesswork(assume your PSU is ~75% efficient at full load, less at lighter loads) and you could arrive at a close estimate


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## Tumbleweed36 (May 14, 2005)

Hi,

In addition to what Please said, you might want to rethink why your unit is running so hot instead of just keep adding fans. There might be an underlying cause that would lessen the need for just more fans all time. For example, in most cases the power supply fan, a front and back fan, and the heatsink fan, the video card fan, are the only fans needed if everything is set up correctly. 

I know there are some exceptions to this, but instead of a band-aide approach of treating the symptom, you might want to look at the cause of your heat and the need for so many fans. Most of the techs could help you take a look at the heat issue and why you need so much cooling. Just thought I would pass that on.


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## captainbarred (May 2, 2005)

I think its running hot because I have excessive heat coming off my hard drives. yeah.... thats not a good thing...

Ive had it running with the fans listed for just under 24 hours now and its now running at slightly over room temperature. currently Black Mesa temp of a comfortable 68 degrees. 

my hard drives are the loudest things in the case, followed by my power supply.

dunno why it gets so hot...:4-dontkno


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

You might have a problem with airflow. Have you got loads of ribbon cables dangling in your case or are they all tied up out of the way? Is there a large enough gap between your 2 hard drives? I recently lost an 80 gig Maxtor drive because it was so close to the one above it, practically touching.


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## Tumbleweed36 (May 14, 2005)

Hi,

I also have an Antec case, but with a 450 watt power supply. In that case I am running an Asus A8N-sli deluxe board with an Athlon 3700+ San Diego with a standard heatsink and fan. Also, I have Two Sata Drives (both 7200 rpm), two IDE 7200 rpm drives, one Iomego Zip, One CD/RW, One floppy, one ATI 700 pci-e card, three USB drives, a camera and printer both off of USB. 

My cooling includes two fans, one front and one rear only, and both are set to run at the very slowest speed they can run (antec 3 speed fans). My temps are 33c to 35c for at rest operation, and 45c to 47c at the under stress usage. I have never seen the computer over 50c since I built it. The unit simply does not get hot and I don't have other fans or cooling devices.

Airflow as mentioned can be very important to make sure your unit does not get hot. Oh, my unit is very quiet without all those fans running at super high speed to cool it.


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## captainbarred (May 2, 2005)

IDE cables aer short so they hardly reach where they need to go, yes its a bit of a mess.

hard drives both have plenty of room. ill go into bios and see if I can find a temp reading...


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## Tumbleweed36 (May 14, 2005)

captainbarred said:


> IDE cables aer short so they hardly reach where they need to go, yes its a bit of a mess.
> 
> hard drives both have plenty of room. ill go into bios and see if I can find a temp reading...


Hi, 

Those round cables in place of ribbon cables help a lot with cooling. They also aren't such a mess in there, so you might want to look at that issue.


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