Goodbye 350w Enermax, Hello old 250w no name psu

If you have been getting random reboots and have been suspecting it to be the +5.00 rail you are probably right.

My system specs Before with a low 5 volt and reboots:

Antec 1030 Case
1700xp Locked running at 11x153
350 watt Dual Fan Enermax
Abit KR7A non Raid
40G Maxtor 7200 rpm
2 Sticks of 256 2100 DDR Crucial
Volcano 7 Base with Delta Fan
ATI Radeon 64Mb

My system specs After with my 5 volt at 5 volt still testing:

A 200 watt AT Psu for fans (8 years old still working)
second 250 watt ATX PSU for everything else.

I bought the 350 watt Enermax with dual fans and i thought it was a great investment which still is but after some overclocking and tweaking i started to get random reboots when my +5.00 would get too low. I'm not sure how low it got but when I play my online game for about 30mins I would hear a click and my system would reboot.

Idle it would be +4.92 to +4.85 with load it would get down to +4.81 and probably lower before it rebooted.

I didnt want to spend more money and get something more powerful and I'm not savvy enough to mod the Enermax PSU...I dont want to die...but I did come across 2 old power supplies laying around.

One was an AT 200 watt PSU with a grey switch from my very first computer I ever had and the second was an ATX 250 watt PSU which was from a bad Bios Flash My girlfriend wasn't impressed.

So what I did was use the AT PSU to power all my fans which is presently sitting outside the case. I want to put it in my Antec tomorrow after some modding. It has its own power on switch which is great. I'm glad i kept it around after all these years.

And I installed the Atx PSU to power up everything else. To my surprise my +5.00 is at +5.00. I have yet to do some overlocking but I like what I see so far.

I dont know what to do with my Enermax now. I guess I can keep it as a backup or maybe return it and hope it is a better one.

I tried the Dual psu idea with the Enermax but the +5 was still below what I wanted.

Anyone else have trouble with Enermax and a similar computer setup as mine? And is it safe for my second PSU to be out on my desk...?

Its safe to have the PSU out on the desk, it just doesn’t look very good. The dual PSU idea is good and if it’s working for you as is don’t mess with it. I do find it odd that the Enermax did so poorly even in the dual PSU setup, how odd.

I have fried 2-431watt and 1-365watt Enermax's in the last 18 months. I went with a dual PSU setup and am very pleased.
My 5V is at 5.1V and the 3.3 is 3.85. It is great when you have a full tower that affords you the luxury of 2 PSU.