Power Supply for More Speed

We added a second CD-ROM drive to our computer, and now there are quite a
few devices drawing power. Am curious weather upgrading our power supply
from 350W to 900W will speed up the performance.

Does the power supply inside a computer affect the performance/speed of
devices & memory? For example, will my RAM gain quicker access-time from
such an upgrade and make the system overall faster?

No. Either the power supply provides enough power or it does not. If it
does (assuming it's a good power supply and its output is "clean"), then
things work as designed. If it doesn't, things don't work. Unless you're
overclocking your system or components, the power supply won't affect speed.
Here's a reference to a good write-up on power supplies:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page1.html

That's written more from a silencing point of view than a POWER (grunt,
grunt) point of view. But, page 3 talks a bit about sizing the power supply
to meet your needs.

Just offhand, you'd have to be running one heck of a rig to need a 900W
power supply (something like two top-end video cards and a slew of drives).
As a point of reference, my system looks like:

- Motherboard: ECS PX1 (1.0B) (P965-based ATX board)
- CPU: Intel E6700
- RAM: Kingston KVR800D2N5K2/2G (2GB PC2-6400 CL5 240-Pin DIMM Kit)
- Video Card: Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH (Silent 7600GT-base card)
- Heatsink: Thermalright SI-120 w/ LGA775 Retention Bracket
- Power Supply: SeaSonic S12-430
- Fans: Two Nexus 120 mm Real Silents -- Replaced Antec TriCool and used one
on SI-120
- Sound Card: Audigy2
- Hard Drive: Western Digital 1600JS
- DVD: Plextor 716SA

I'm running that off a 430W power supply without problem. My APC UPS
software doesn't work yet with Vista, so I can't tell you exactly what my
power draw is. But, under XP, my whole system (including cable modem and
router) was using something on the order of 200W.



"Patrick Whittle" <patrick_whittle@hotmail.com> wrote in message
newsrOHWqpUHHA.1552@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> We added a second CD-ROM drive to our computer, and now there are quite a
> few devices drawing power. Am curious weather upgrading our power supply
> from 350W to 900W will speed up the performance.
>
> Does the power supply inside a computer affect the performance/speed of
> devices & memory? For example, will my RAM gain quicker access-time from
> such an upgrade and make the system overall faster?
>
>
>