Do I need a PSU Upgrade?

furnace

furnace

furnace

Soldato
Joined
12 Dec 2006
Posts
3,421
Location
Worthing, West Sussex
OK so it's my turn to ask questions now! My current spec..:

Asus P5B Deluxe
2GB G.Skill CL5 6400 RAM
E6300 @ stock (too hot to o/c)
Arctic Freezer 7
256mb 7600GS
Thermaltake Silent PurePower 550W PSU

What I want is:

E6300 @ 3Ghz
Tuniq Tower
nVidia 8xxx (awaiting R600/price drops/nvidias 'comeback')

But I've had problems:

DVD drive playing up installing Windows XP
Graphics card (X1950XT) would crash when loading up Company of Heroes
Sold graphics card, got this 7600GT
7600GT artifacts occasionally

So I'm thinking maybe all the above has been caused by a poor PSU. I've had no problems with this PSU until now - if my PSU is even the problem.

I have had my eye on the Corsair 620W Modular, but then I wonder if there's any point in getting that... will I be just as well off getting the 520w? Or is my PSU even causing any problems - will I be better off just getting something else, like a Tuniq Tower? These PSU's seem pretty expensive and I dont wanna spend £100 if it's not going to make a blind bit of difference...

Then I will replace the AF7 for the Tuniq Tower and get some overclocking done. If the PSU is causing problems, I guess it'd be a good idea to get a new one of those before overclocking.

Then finally I will get a new graphics card.

Opinions please? :)
 
I'd just wait until you've got the gear to see, it might be fine.

Not having enough power shouldn't damage anything so there's no harm giving it a go.
 
The PSU should have more than enough power but are the rails etc stable? PSUs do degrade in efficiency over time so if you have had it for a long time or its rails are fluctuating then it might be a good time to replace it.
 
Well you certainly have plenty of watts in that PSU but I'm not sure what the rails are like on the Thermaltake PSUs... IIRC, you need a fairly decent dual rail PSU with around 24A on rach rail to run an 8800. Might be as well to get a new PSU anyway as your current problems do all seem to be power related :(
 
I've had it for what must be going on for three years... Maybe more like 2 and a half.

The main concern is the artifacting in-game. Unfortunately I didn't buy this card from an etailer, but from an auction. So returns are difficult and I don't really want to send it back to "Galaxy Technology" - their website seems to only be online half the time, their returns can't be particularly reliable...

Looking at the temps on this card I don't think it's anything to do with overheating. And it can't be bad memory on the card as it only happens after a period of time - not throughout the whole game.

So taking that into consideration with the other problems, I figured the one thing that hasn't changed in the equation is the PSU.

I did measure the voltages going into my X1950XT when I had it, and they seemed fine with only a tiny amount of fluctuation.
 
I don't think I did... I'll give it another go with a multimeter tomorrow :) Does anyone know what ampage I should be expecting? (What's good, what's bad)
 
I haven't done the multimeter test yet, but I have had another problem;

When I put a dual layer blank DVD in, the dvd drive spun it up and would "crunch", then spin up and "crunch", etc until I pressed eject. It's definately a dual layer DVD writer, I bought it as one, and it says "DVD-R DL" on the front, and the dvd I'm using says "DVD-R DL" on it. So it should be working!

Another power related problem?

I tried another CD drive when I had problems installing windows XP but I still had the problems. The same windows CD worked fine on other PC's though... which seems to suggest it's not the drive itself. It's definately not the mobo either, as I had the problem on the Gigabyte mobo too.

If I measure the ampage and voltages, and it all seems OK, do you rekon there's still a chance of it being power related? :confused:

In a perfect world I'd just get a new PSU anyway. But - in said perfect world - the PSU would be free :p either that or I'd be very rich...
 
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