Compruter guys
 

So when does a power supply become the bottleneck in a system? I have no idea what/where/how to find out which power supply i have as well... My system was built in 05, originally running xp, P4 at 3.2gigs, only changes ive made so far have been going from 512mb to 4gb in ram, putting in a new gfx card, geforce gt430, running windows 7, everything else is as stock... Ieventually want to vtec my HD for some rpm, but im worried i wont be able to power it, or if im already pushing the stock supply? advise please

edit, opened the case and found out its a NPS-305BB C revision 6, that means it has a max stock output of 305w... think that suffices?

Your computer is 7 years old, closing in on 8. What the power supply is doesn't matter.

And, in the spirit of offering some form of help:

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/p...ulatorlite.jsp

I'd say the fact that youre running a pentium 4 would be your bottleneck. hell since your computer theres been multiple generations of chipsets.

two questions. What are you using this computer for. And what the hell are you talking about vtec your hd?

1. i use it for 3 things; school work, interwebbing, and playing spider solitaire whilst doing the other 2.. that would be 99% of the use of the machine

2. getting a faster hard drive

Win7 32 or 64-bit? You could try maxxing out your RAM depending on your mobo. Definitely go for an SSD. I got a Sandisk 120GB for like $80. I'd get a quality name-brand PSU like Antec or Thermaltake, at least 500w. Like it's been said, your processor is dated, but if you're just doing minimal work like you said, then you should be able to make it last.
I bought a core-i7, maxxed out the RAM at 16GB and my OS is running on an SSD for less than a grand (I also have a 3TB drive plus a mirrored 3TB external drive for all my downloads.)