585w Draw on 660w PSU

NoNameNoNumber

NoNameNoNumber

NoNameNoNumber

Soldato
Joined
25 Nov 2009
Posts
5,392
Time for an upgrade now I've gone back to an AMD GPU it appears my ancient 660w Seasonic x-series isn't cutting the mustard.
Seeing peaks of 585w in game and that's with only the card OCd, problem is I want to try and turn the CPU up a bit but I have no headroom on this PSU.

What can you recommend?
 
Something like 850W would be more like it.

What parts you exactly have?
In case of CPU starting to feel sluggish, there's likely worthy successor available in few months.
As in 12 cores/24 threads for lot lower price than what you likely paid for that in your signature.
 
The CPU feels strong in everything except The Division 2 where I'm struggling to maintain 75fps @1440
GPU usage around 40%. I have stable CPU OC profiles for 4.4Ghz and 5Ghz which should give a good jump over 3.3Ghz but as soon as I apply a CPU OC it blue screens and fails to boot.
But yeah, Ryzen 3000x sounds like an option.
3930k @3.3Ghz water block
Rampage IV Extreme and water blocks.
2x8Gb Dominator Platinum @2133Mhz
Vega 56 Sapphire Pulse 1700/950 and undervolted.
6x SSD and 2x mech drives.
EK D5 and 12x120mm fans and a fan controller.
 
NoNameNoNumber said:
A power meter plugged into the wall with the kettle lead for the PSU plugged into it.
Click to expand...
Then you are fine. Your power supply is capable of SUPPLYING 660w. At 660w output to your hardware, your PSU would have to pull over 700w at the wall to do so. So you'll have much more overhead left in your PSU than you realise. This is the case for all PSUs.

If your PSU is say, a gold 80 rating, when drawing 585w at the wall, it'll be supplying your hardware with about 470w of power. Which means you've still got almost 200w of headroom left.
 
spoffle said:
Then you are fine. Your power supply is capable of SUPPLYING 660w. At 660w output to your hardware, your PSU would have to pull over 700w to do so. So you'll have much more overhead left in your PSU than you realise.
Click to expand...

Is there another reason I can no longer boot on previously known stable OC profiles then?
I have both 4.4 and 5.0Ghz profiles saved in my bios, both of them now fail to get into windows... I was kinda hoping a new power supply would free up some CPU speed?
 
NoNameNoNumber said:
Is there another reason I can no longer boot on previously known stable OC profiles then?
I have both 4.4 and 5.0Ghz profiles saved in my bios, both of them now fail to get into windows... I was kinda hoping a new power supply would free up some CPU speed?
Click to expand...
Possible chip degradation? Your PC won't be drawing even near peak power at boot. How old is your PC?
 
If the PSU is ancient then its possible something has degraded enough that its not providing clean enough power at boot with the draw you are pulling. (maybe even the mobo is degrading and not supplying clean juice)
With the probable chip degredation over that time as well it could just be right on the edge at that point.

Also possible the TIM has gone so your getting potential heat spike or something?
 
The PSU iirc predates this build, so yes, getting on for a decade maybe...
I think the best course of action would be a quality ~ 800w PSU in the short term, see if that helps the stability. Even if it doesn't, it won't necessarily be money wasted as in the medium term (6-12 months maybe) I should perhaps look at a new main board...
Although if I can get more than 3.3Ghz out of this 3930k I'm sure it'll still hold its own.
 
Those Seasonic X650 PSU's are very high end, Jonny Guru once tested one to over 700w load.

That said if your drawing almost 600w then that's far to close for my liking and would pick a higher wattage PSU.
 
Last edited:
Yeah I'd happily go for another Seasonic. I guess the question is... If a 3.3Ghz 3930k is pulling nearly 600w then how much more power will it require to run a decent overclock? I dare say there's another 100w to go on top?
 
Just to reiterate, this PSU is between 87-90% efficient, so pulling 585w at the wall is indicative of an actual load of ~520w. You'll have to increase your load by 25% to reach maximum load.

If you read this review, you'll find these are known to be overspecced. It supplied over 800w before it shut down safely. https://www.kitguru.net/components/...seasonic-x-series-660w-power-supply-review/6/. 800w supplied - at the efficiency it runs at at that load - would be 932w at the wall. I would only begin to worry about upgrading once busting past the 760w at the wall point. You don't need a new PSU :p
 
NoNameNoNumber said:
Perfect. @Zefan
How do you feel about degradation?
Click to expand...

Maybe it's degraded over the years, but they're great units from my limited reading, I'd have high confidence that it'll shut down way before it gets unsafe. If it was a no name, or not a decently reviewed unit, I'd probably look at swapping it out. I have no idea about the clean power on boot issue, I've not heard of that being a thing before but I'm no electrical engineer :p
 
Yeah fair point... PSU can stay then! I'll maybe look into the CPU overclocks and fiddle with the voltages a little. Could equally be chip/motherboard degradation.

You make a good point though, if the PSU couldn't sustain the power draw, it'd shut down as opposed to bluescreening?
 
NoNameNoNumber said:
Perfect. @Zefan
How do you feel about degradation?
Click to expand...

I think capacitor degradation is over rated especially on the higher end components.

I've got Pioneer HiFi amplifiers that are 28 years old still going and sounding fine with their original capacitors.

What i'm saying is if the PSU was higher end to start with then I would not worry to much about degradation.
 
Last edited:
Hi have you tried all the connections like CPU Extra power?
As could be not making a great contact once under load seen a few where burnt pins on psu over that.

Have you thought/tried checking volts with meter while in use? check on back of plugs with probes.
What about if GPU is the issue with drawing to much current as been reading been issues with that card some had them running way too hot across parts and something setting volts too high there is a post on here.

Have you taken CPU out to check it's seating? as remember somewhere that bod had issues which turned out some of the pins under CPU wasn't touching properly so would cause issue under load.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom