So you went from a supply that was under-rated to one that was rated to handle you power load. The original PS probably sensed load increases that exceeded rating, saw them as short circuits and shut the supply off momentarily (rebooting periodically) to avoid overheating of parts. I've never designed supplies for a living, but I think its safe to say that most come with analog sense lines which detect too much loading and shut the supply off before excessive heating occurs. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wyl Newland" <wylnewland at gmail.com> To: "tclug" <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 3:02 PM Subject: Re: [tclug-list] OT: Uptime and power supply > On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 11:13:10 -0600, Jack Surek <jsurek at mn.rr.com> wrote: > > well-designed supply would not fail over the life of a computer--it would be > > designed with parts rated at twice the voltage stress seen in worst-case > > operation. > > One of my machines started to reboot periodically. Long, painful, > multi-day story made short. By opening box and adding up amps by > voltage, from each disk drive, fan, etc., I found I had for a long > time pulling 18 amps 12v on a supply rated at 16 amps 12v. A modern > Antec power supply with 28 amps on 12v solved the problem for me. > > I decided that amps by voltage rather than watts seemed the safer way > to size a power supply. If my conclusion is incorrect, please > explain. > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list