Power Supply not enough?

I have a 250W power supply currently but just added a 2nd hard drive last night. My current power supply didn't have enough connectors to have all my fans and my new HD going so I was forced to unplug one of my fans (my outtake fan).

Later, when playing a game, the sound became sluggish, sort of like when your walkman's batteries are dying. I figured this to be the power supply not having enough juice to run everything. I have since ordered a new power supply (mostly for the reason of I need my outtake fan working again), but I wanted to know if you thought my power supply was causing hte problem with the sound, too. This sound problem did not occur before the new HD.

Specs:
1-WD 40GB HD - 7200RPM
1-WD 120GB HD - 7200RPM (yes, the one from Dell)
1-Plextor CDRW 12x10x32
1-EIDE Zip Drive
T'bird 1.33Ghz
GForce2 GTS 32MB
Hercules GTXP
Netgear 10/100 NIC
WinXP Pro
2 case fans

I went to look at AMD's "how to figure out how much power you need" but it was way too much work and I figured I was ordering one anyway so that will tell me.

By the way, I ordered an Enermax 350...good brand?

Love the enermax supplies, they are the easiest to take apart and mod :D

if you like show up to prac/matches (tonight, hint hint) I can help you figure out how much you need compared to what you have.

The PS can cause that, but more than likely not. The problem I had with my sound getting flakey was the drive I added to my machine. I added some 80gb seagates, but come to find out the slow/choppy crappyness was due to stuff not liking to run off the raid controller. Moved everything back to c:\ and it ran fine. raid=shit, normal=good

and toms has an awesome guide to Powersupplies and who's are good and who's suck.

Read the recent one on Tom's before I bought it and picked a quiet one with a lot of plugs (and not a huge price tag).

MB is an Asus A7V133. Both HD's are on the same IDE controller and I think it is hte RAID controller although I dont' use RAID.

And I've been showing up to practice... just missed Thursday... :D

when a walkman's sound gets sluggish its because the motor is slowing down.

when your computer's sound gets sluggish, there's no motor to do that.

*SMACK*

if ur lookin to go cheap, on newegg they have compucase (HEC) power supplies for really cheap, tomshardware gave the 300watt one a really good review, and my cousin has the 350watt one himself, said it rocks and keeps great voltages

True my computer has no motor, but its parts do require electricity. When the lights dim because there is less current going through the bulb I don't blame it on the bulb's motor :)

I was thinking it could be the same thing...maybe I used a poor analogy :ftard:

that's a lightbulb whos sole purpose is to convert electricity into light and heat energy. that's now how things in your computer work with transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc. etc. i'm sure in some strange and weird way, power could cause that, but it almost assuredly isn't it.

Lack of power creates all sorts of odd things. I had a 250W power supply and had a similar # of peripherals running except I also had DVD player but only 1 HD and everything ran fine. When I added a 2nd HD .. I would have to sometimes reboot to find my drives ...things would go smoothly and them they would not show up for some reason. I changed my power supply to a 350W and no problems since ...going on 3 months. Odd ..but true :o

move the raid first off.

I have used and am still using a sparkle 235 watt supply with my athlon 1800 with 5 hard drives and 2 cdroms with no issues.

The board and cpu are more likely to get flakey over sound cards.

I think it might have been a heat issue...without that outtake fan my processor was at 70 degrees Celsius...

I unplugged my zip drive and plugged that plug into the fan and haven't had a problem since...that being said, full load is back to 65 degrees Celsius where it normally is...

You buy an extension for one of the main connectors so that you can add another couple of connectors on ..same idea as an extension plug? That way you can run everything .. instead of having to unplug your zip drive to have your fan running. I'm pretty sure you can buy them at any comp store.