I just bought an enermax 350w psu to replace my old 250w psu, now i seem to be having a problem with the pc slowing down when i play games its juttery, i burnt a cd and the buffer level kept going up and down took ages to burn also it takes a long time to start windows up sound distorted slow etc.. I think its a problem with the memory somewhere along the line but not sure.

I have plenty room in hd its been defragged no programs are running that dont need to be, i only have 1 hd and 1 cd writer connected, i use an aero 7 for heatsink and have two additional fans the psu is also controlled manually or just leave it as it is.

I have a amd athlon 1400Mhz, 512 ddr ram, geforce card.

HD and cd writer are on separate ide cables, no additional hardware has been added to the pc, before i bought the psu i rang up and asked if the psu was compatable with the mobo and processor and was told it was my mobo is a gigabyte 7vtx.

If i was to upgrade my processor would that help? anyway hope you guys can help me thx

Hi iced
If you had none of these problems before you changed the Power Supply out, then there is no reason it shouldn't be running the same with the new Power Supply.

Is it possible you loosened some connections or something else inside the case when changing out the PSU? Or changed something in the configuration?
Unfortunately, you may have just received a defective Enermax.
(I know in the old days at least, while they make excellent Power Supplies, they were notorious for low voltage on one of the legs. Can't remember if it was the 3.3 or 5v leg though).
Low voltage is the only possible thing I can think of to relate a Power Supply to the particular problems you are having....rather strange that it only started with the new one.

Was the old PSU shot? Or do you still have it around where you could put in back in for and see if everything is back to normal?

Upgrading your processor is not the solution at this point if everything worked great with your old 250w psu...something changed while replacing it.
And your gigabyte MB is an ATX and certainly "compatible" with the Enermax ATX. (The fact that everything fit and it's up and running pretty much confirms that!).

(Edit) Am I reading you right? Everything worked perfectly until you put the new Power Supply in.
Correct? :confused:

Its possible i may have moved something, :( , i still have my old psu but i changed it as it is on its way out very noisy. I shall get inside the case and check to see if everthing is fitted correctly and then put the old psu in, i didnt really want to put the old one back in :) but it looks like i shall have to. Thanks for your help i shall let you know how i get on.

Ok when i changed psu i took heatsink off and cleaned paste with acetone and put more paste on i noticed one of the rubber things was missing off the processor but it must of been missing before, anyway comp is running at 55 for cpu and 42 for case i may of done something wrong i dont know.

I tried another hard drive in my comp and it still done the same thing slow down on games, and when i play music its fine but if i do anything else at the same time it slows, all drivers are updated, windows up to date i think i may of done something to the processor could this be my problem? all the connections to psu are properly in.

I was thinking about buying a new board, case and processor and use the rest of my cards that are in this comp im using have a look see what you think about the board your comments are appreciated, its annoying when i cant play games :mad: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=118027

Do you still have the old PSU?
If so, then try putting it back - the noise doesn't matter for now, just see if it produces similar symptoms.
If the same symptoms appear even when you use the old PSU, then this means the problem obviously lies elsewhere.
The memory (RAM) is one area that could be a problem, but damage to the CPU is also likely - did you take the correct anti-static precautions when removing the heatsink to clean the CPU?
Try the old psu and let us know how you get on - no point going out to get a new set up just yet.

If one of the rubber things was missing from the CPU heatsink, it may have damaged part of the core when you re-did it. A damaged or broken L2 cache module/bridge would explain the "slowness" you're reporting.

Before you plunk down more money for a new CPU, try running a memory tester with the CPU cache turned off in the BIOS. Then turn the cache back on and run the mem tester again.