Is 500W enough?

[#1]

Quote from: jmart

That was a total bust!  Same problem with both PSUs. Reckon it's RMA time.

What was the spec of the second PSU?
Let us know how the RMA goes.

[#2]

2nd PSU came from a system running another foxconn board of similar spec, although it was only 300W.
I'll keep you up to date, hopefully be good news from here on in.

[#3]

Just because it was running in another PC doesn't mean it would have enough juice to run yours, besides you went from 500w down to 300w. I doubt the 300 would have had enough on the +12 rail. I wouldn't be surprised if your motherboard did the same as mine, bounced back with a clean bill of health.
Have a glimp at this guys article, and pay particular attention to what he says about +12v rails: http://compreviews.about.com/od/cases/a/PSUWattage.htm.

[#4]

Well, guess what, apparently it works fine. I've asked about the test PSU and it's 350W with 16A on the +12V.
Guess it's faulty PSUs at my end.

[#5]

Had a feeling it would. Looks like you're in the market for a new PSU then, like me.
I'm going for the best that I can afford that's got at least 30A on that 12v rail and 6 molex power connectors, so I've got a dedicated supply solely for my video card.
You can't get a too powerful PSU because the system will only use as much as it needs.

[#6]

I was running my system (Athlon 64 x2, ATI 3870 Graphics, ASUS M2N SLI, DVD +-RW, 5 internal and 3 external (own power supply) HDDs on a cheap 550W PSU. In general all worked OK except that I had several HDDs fail over an 18 month period. Couldn't fathom out why until the MB failed taking with it a graphics card.
I got my local friendly dealer to check things out for me and it appeared that the PSU had several problems;
Mainly, the power output was nowhere near the rated output and there was a loose (burnt) connection which could have been the cause of the hard drive failures.
I have now got an expensive 700W PSU and haven't looked back since.

[#7]

Quote from: okrzynska

Camera flash circuits... now they're fun if you want to learn to fly Last time I hit one of those I tele ported 2 feet backwards and landed in the wall

Yep, a friend of mine realised that taking one of those disposable cameras apart was not a good idea

[#8]

@ Mav: Yeah, mine worked for months on a 450w PSU with 1x HD & a zip drive on 1 IDE channel, 2x Opticals on the other and 2 more IDE HDs on the RAID configured as IDE and an nVidia 6600GT, before it blew.