hi y'all,

about 3 months ago, I purchases a stealth ati 128mb 9250 to replace my old 8500 le, I have a stock dell 4400 and the stock dell psu is 250w rated. with the following other hardware...

1) tdk a06 dvd burner
2) hp cd-rw
3) 40 gb seagate hd
4) 80 gb maxtor hd
5) sometimes plug to usb external 160 gb hd ultra
6) dell w1900 fpd

Then about 1 week ago the monitor wouldn't display, I figured it was the card since I took out the 9250 and put back the 8500 and it worked fine. I then decided to take back the 9250 and bought a xtasy 9600xt that was on sale. So far everything is ok, but do you think the psu that is rated 250w played a part on the 9250 not working and might also not be enough for the 9600xt? on other forums it is saying a dell 250w is adequate since dells psu actually is more, but on the xtsay website, recommeded is 300x.

Please help.
Thank you. :)

OEM power supplies are marginal as a general rule, it saves money and gets the list price down so they sell more boxes. I would trust TomsHardware site over Dell for testing PSUs.
With Dell you had some PSUs that are proprietary for wiring as well, so be certain the PSU is made to fit the Dell before you plug it in. We have had instances where members fried their systems before finding out Dell used Non-Standard ATX wiring patterns.

I would contact Dell and see if you can a PSU from them. You will pay more, but it will be safer....

PC Power and Cooling, the "God-like" manufacturer of PSUs as Saphalline says, also makes Dell compatitble units. I think you can trust God-like.

thanks guys for the help and quick reply.

Here is link to PC Power & Cooling's site:
http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/home/

Also a Dell selector page:
http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/power_supplies/selector/dell_index.htm

Not cheap but great power supplies.
:)

another quick question guys,
how do you check the temperture of whatever needs checking and what is the usual "okay" temps?

The consensus best temperature diagnostic is Motherboard Monitor. You can get it here. (http://www.majorgeeks.com/Motherboard_Monitor_d311.html) I've heard it doesn't work with some Dells (go figure). If it doesn't work with yours, another choice is CPUCool. You can also get that from MajorGeeks, under Diagnostics. More comprehensive, and not dedicated solely to temperature monitoring (though it does) is Sandra and/or Sandra Lite. As a fallback, a good standard BIOS--that may excude Dell's--will also have CPU temperature indications and settings that you can access.

You always want to look at CPU temp. You would like to see the mobo temp. Internal case temp and grahics adapter temp are nice to know, as well.

What temperatures are good...or OK...depend on a number of things but as a ballpark rule, a P4 with a stock Intel HSF at idle will be about 44C in a comfortable room--one in the 72-78F range. A thermal event--like shutdown to prevent damage--will happen around 65-67C, or whatever it's set to in the BIOS, if the BIOS has that feature (meaning manual adjustment). Intel kind of hides thermal information on their chips, but it is around. AMD thermal characteristics are different, but I don't know those.

Temperature fluctuations above idle will depend on a number of things--ambient room temp, case cooling, and CPU load among them. It's really not unusual for a modern P4 Prescott to climb 10C under a load such as a good game or even a thorough AV scan. Assuming you have a good cooling system, the maximum temperature sustained during a load should immediately begin dropping as soon as the load is removed--meaning, you stop playing the game or running the scan or whatever.

Some really good electrical and thermal data, including data for just about any chip (CPU) can be found here. (http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm#intel) The information is compiled by a guy named Chris Hare. It IS NOT the manufacture's data, though it is drawn from such. Nice site.

thanks a bunch, you guys truly know your stuff.