well, i just upgraded my comp from 2 7800's to two 8800GT's and my comp was crashing while playing demanding games (crysis, oblivion). So i got a gift certificate to best buy and went to get a new power supply. i got a 650W BFG ATX 12v gs series. so i spent 90 mins puttin this thing in (never did it before) and when i was all done i looked at my old power supply and realized that it was also 650W. ARG. so my question is: is the newer power supply gonna run my comp better because it is new and also name brand? my old one was silverstone, and was 3 years old. i appreciate the input. sorry for long post!

-jason

Silverstone is a great PSU. I have the Silverstone 600w modular Strider currently.

Although name brand isn't everything, it helps in most scenarios. The important thing to look at is the amperage on the 12v/5v/3v rails, the efficiency rating, and rated wattage. Off-brand companies such as Sunbeam, for example, also make coffee machines and a slew of other stuff. They do this by paying some cheap ass company make the product then they slap their name on it.

When you put in the 8800GTs did you update your drivers to the newest ones? What happened when the computer crashed?

when it crashes, first the sound starts looping like a 100th of a second loop, then the screen will either just freeze up or go blank. the mouse wont move or anything and none of the buttons work on the keyboard. the only choice is to force shutdown. and SOMETIMES (maybe this happened about 3 or 4 times) i will get a blue screen which states that i am having hardware failure and the computer will now shutdown. and it tells me to contact my hardware vendor. oh and yeah...i did update to the latest drivers possible. i even did that again about a week ago, but to no avail.

i will say that since i installed my new PS, i can run crysis without it crashing. the longest i've played so far was about an hour until i turned it off with no problems.

What type of RAM do you have/how many sticks and what kind? Do you overclock your machine?

no overclock. i have 2 gigs of ram. 2 sticks. not sure what kind (how do i find out?).

download cpu-z in one of tabs it'll tell you heaps of information about your ram