Ever since I installed the ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition on my motherboard about 2 years ago, I started experiencing an irritating yet inconsistent problem of the PC shutting down in the middle of a game, especially when some wicked special effects were filling up the screen. Though maddening, it never really bothered me at all. About a month ago, the problem had worsened where my PC would just restart almost every 15 minutes while I was playing World of Warcraft. I had to reduce the graphics setting to make the PC stabilize a bit more but this solution really did not make much sense the fact that WoW is not that graphically demanding of a game. I consulted a couple of friends who agreed that I should change the power supply for my PC for it was probably struggling to keep up with the now outdated graphics card all this time. After browsing through several websites, I ordered one from Tigerdirect.com and it arrived on Monday.
It came in a really big box!
My old power supply claims to be 380W but I really doubt that it was even that juiced up. I decided to go with 600W so that I can be as future-proof as possible without having to worry about spending too much cash: as if that is even possible in the realm of PC gaming... I got the Ultra XFinity 2G that has an "after spin" technology that I thought was pretty cool - it allows your PC fans to still run for a couple of minutes after your PC is turned off to ensure that everything is properly cooled off.
Never allow some crazy looking wires to intimidate you!
Component installations on the PC are really all plug and play but many people still treat them like rocket science. Still, I am very particular about making sure that everything is installed perfectly thus I normally send for my IT Technician friend to do all the dirty work for me. This time, I got a bit impatient. Just the previous night, the PC started to shut down as soon as I logged into WoW, which was beyond ridiculous and I just wanted to get the whole thing taken care of. So I pried open the case and after about half an hour, it was all done.
Before...
After!
When I finally turned the PC back on, it wouldn't start! The PC would boot up but nothing was showing on the screen. It was also beeping, which I found a bit disturbing. That lead into an hour of me plugging and unplugging cables without a hint of success. I thought that I had accidentally ruined my motherboard and it scared me a little. When my IT friend came over and looked at it, he discovered that my RAMs where not properly plugged in. I remembered dislocating them while I was positioniong the power supply in but I thought I already inserted them back into their respective slots. I had a good laugh out of that.
So how is my PC doing so far? Well, since Monday I have not encountered any problems whatsoever. I tried several games at maximum settings and the PC didn't even flinch. One game that I know for certain would normally kill it is a maxed out Heroes of Might and Magic V and the PC even survived that. All is well! Now if only I could afford a couple of the latest Nvidia cards since I am powered up and all...
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