Older Powerman 300W power supply, should I upgrade?

I have the original Powerman 300W power supply that came with my In-Win Q500 which I bought some 3 or 4 years ago. From the limited research I've done, Powermen? seem to make pretty good PS's but this particular unit predates the ATX12 specs which AMD and Intel both recommend for their latest and greatest equipment.

To date I've had reasonably good luck with the PS with my 2100+ (oc'ed to 2700+) in my A7N8X Dlx with 512MB DDR333 (it's actually
Kingston HyperX PC3000 ram), one 120MB Maxtor ATA133, and one DVD+-RW. The system get's a little unstable if I push the
FSB/sync mem past 170Mhz. It'll run benchmarks for hours and hours at this speed, but for some reason, it occasionally locks up in some games. I haven't done too much research to figure out why, since the system is completely stable at 166Mhz. The voltages seem pretty close in asusprobe.

I plan on "upgrading" from my Geforce 4 Ti4200 to an ATI 9500 (hopefully softmodable to a 9700 Pro) in the near future as well.

You think she'll stay stable, or should I consider upgrading it to a quality (Sparkle?) 400W power supply?

Thanks!

Well, you're running a very high-spec system there, with a 300watt PSU that you feel is questionable.

Have a look at your voltage rails, if they're rock steady right beside their supposed figures, whilst under load, then you might well be okay.

However, if you can invert your voltage graphs to tell how hard the CPU is working (it's happened to me lol ) then I think it's time to upgrade your powersupply... You're spot on when you suggest that your next upgrade will be a sparkle

From what I understand the Powerman PS is actually a rebranded Sparkle unit (again not their latest model, but supposedly the Sparkle 300W units were good for at least 350+W). All the voltages are within 1-3% using asusprobe. I installed a case fan behind the CPU on my In-Win Q500 and it dropped the CPU temp another 4 degrees C (from 42 C idle to 38C idle). I think I'll try 170FSB again and see if the CPU was cr*pping out on me before. I get my 9500 on Friday. If things stay reasonably stable, I'll hold off on the PS purchase until I add another HD.

I've had this case/PS for 3-4 years now. It's seen it's share of MBs, CPUs, etc, but never got heavy usage. Hopefully it won't crap out on me know...

Electrically, what are the *practical* differences between regular ATX and ATX12V, other than the extra 4-pin connector? IOW if the +12V capacity is high enough and you solder in that extra connector to the circuit board, don't you essentially have an ATX12V PSU? Also does the A7N8X mobo even use +12V for the CPU power, either through that square 4-pin connector or an IDE power connector? If not, I'd think that the +12V capacity would hardly matter. OTOH I'm not sure it's possible to run both an XP2700+ and a super-fast video card from the +5V, but if the video card takes most of its power from the +12V it should be no problem.