Can a bad psu cause this?

swiftmetal · 2 Sep 2013 at 12:44

hello guys recently I had a psu fail on me. It was a G7 880 w psu and when it failed I was lucky that it did not take my whole system with it.

My question is that when i changed it to a Corsair cx 600 m psu some random little problems that i had have all disappeared. These problems included:

My ssd boot drive would sometimes on boot have a disk read error and then I would have to restart and see if it would boot up again.

With my gpu I would have to underclock it to keep the temperature in check and was in the process of rmaing it. After the new psu it is running around 15 degrees lower and that is at an overclock speed.

Would a bad psu really cause this?

scotsdragon · 2 Sep 2013 at 12:45

Pretty much unstable power is the root of many niggles and glitches

Doomedspeed · 2 Sep 2013 at 13:36

You have been lucky, This is best lesson to learn about PC building, don't skimp on the PSU..

whitetop · 2 Sep 2013 at 13:44

Psu is the main item you don't cheap out on, so many problem's i've had due to this now I don't cheap out. it should be a 101 lesson.

Plus yeah sounds like a unstable power problem.

Hakanese · 2 Sep 2013 at 14:30

Why would you go from an 880w psu to a smaller one? Without knowing what hardware in your system it's hard to be 100% sure if it is the psu. Or whether the psu blowing out did do some damage to your parts. Try a different psu around the same wattage as your original and see if the problems persist. If they stop it's a case f needing more power.

Doomedspeed · 2 Sep 2013 at 15:03

Hakanese said:
Why would you go from an 880w psu to a smaller one? Without knowing what hardware in your system it's hard to be 100% sure if it is the psu. Or whether the psu blowing out did do some damage to your parts. Try a different psu around the same wattage as your original and see if the problems persist. If they stop it's a case f needing more power.

You can read through back his threads and see he has a 6100/6300 (i forgot which) and a 7870 LE) (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18534787)

The 880W PSU was a cheap one £25-£35.. So the power of it was irrelivant.. The voltage/power stability is more an issue as this thread shows..

The corsair he's picked is a great choice, for a budget..

Hakanese · 2 Sep 2013 at 17:15

I'm not doubting the quality of the new psu, just whether there is enough power. I mean unless he overestimated power need of the system while building a 200+w drop in power output may be an issue

decto · 2 Sep 2013 at 22:25

swiftmetal said:
With my gpu I would have to underclock it to keep the temperature in check and was in the process of rmaing it. After the new psu it is running around 15 degrees lower and that is at an overclock speed.

Would a bad psu really cause this?

Sounds like your new PSU is doing a significant part of the case cooling, do you have any other fans to push/pull air through the case.

AD

swiftmetal · 2 Sep 2013 at 22:58

decto said:
Sounds like your new PSU is doing a significant part of the case cooling, do you have any other fans to push/pull air through the case.

AD

Yes I do I have one front intake and 1 top and rear exhaust fans but nothing has changed in regards to airflow or anything like that just a better psi.

As for the downgrade in wattage from my psu is because it was high power and cheap and I thought it was a good deal and after getting advice from the good people on this forum I went with a there advice and got more suitable psu and a better brand to boot.

The reason why I started this thread was to see weather all my problems were because of a bad psu or somthing that I needed to look further into.

P.s. Once again thanks for the help and especially doomedspeed for the great help

Energize · 3 Sep 2013 at 01:26

Hakanese said:
Why would you go from an 880w psu to a smaller one? Without knowing what hardware in your system it's hard to be 100% sure if it is the psu. Or whether the psu blowing out did do some damage to your parts. Try a different psu around the same wattage as your original and see if the problems persist. If they stop it's a case f needing more power.

He said the problems have gone away with the new lower wattage psu...

In reality a cheap psu doesn't provide anywhere near it's stated power output anyway so the newer psu is probably capable of outputting more power than the older one.

MOOGLEYS · 3 Sep 2013 at 01:44

Everything connects and relies on good clean stable power from your psu. If this is not what's being supplied it can cause all sorts of problems.

As the problems have now been fixed by fitting a decent PSU its no doubt your old inferior PSU would have been the root of your problems.

A decent PSU is a must especially on high load gaming systems.

Hakanese · 3 Sep 2013 at 02:05

I must have misread OP, these double shifts are killing me. Apologies.