Finding out if your PSU is failing to Supply Enough Wattage

Snax

Snax

Snax

Soldato
Joined
5 Jul 2003
Posts
4,250
Location
Larndarn
Hi folks,

Before i start, any time spent indulging me with a reply is much appreciated. Thank you :)

My Specs:

p4 2.4c OC to 3ghz
4 sticks of ocz 3500 ddr ram (1 gig)
2 hdds
2 dvd/cd drives
Geforce 6800 nu, @ stock
Antec PSU (330w i think, came with case)


I presume i wont get any quibbles that my pc should be able to run Black and White 2 and Oblivion at some form of setting...

However, the problem i keep having is that both games force my PC to Hard reboot or crash so badly i need to pull the power cable out to get the pc to reset..

My PC has passed 10 hrs woth of prome 95 testing and memtest86 tests

I have had no problems with games doing this before this which leads me to two conclusions:

1) Both games are notoriously and it could just be that- i cant get either to work despite the many different drivers i have had

2) Both games are pushing my PC so hard that it is revealing the PSU weakness

Does a lack of power normally manifest itself in reboots?

What confuses me is that i played oblivion for about 10 hours before i fiddled with some settings to try and get it to run smoother- after that it was a no go. I have tried reinstlalling

I installed new creative drivers from the creative site- i know creative drivers are dodgy, but is te current release really bad? I have tried disabling the sound card too... no luck :(

I dont really want to buy a new PSU for no reason. is there any way i can check is that is the cause of the reboots? Any other tips?
 
I'd suggest you remove the overclock plus one optical and a hard drive if that isn't required for the games then see if it reboots while playing games. This might show you if the problem is PSU based as by removing some of the load you can see how well it performs.

You can also check rail voltage with programs like Motherboard Monitor etc but it isn't as good as doing it with a proper voltage monitor(difficult to do while gaming though).
 
yah i think it is an antec 330w-

is a disk drive a significant power consumer? if so i will remove the cdrw
 
Optical drives use about 0.5Watts when they arnt spinning, around 25-30watts while spinning up the disk, and around 10-20watts when reading a disk thats already spun up to speed.

So disconnecting an optical drive is pointless.

How many amps can that antec supply at 12V,

My 3.5Ghz P4([email protected]), 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives, and a Geforce 6800Ultra uses around 230watts measured on the 240v side of things while gaming. Assuming a 70% efficiency on my powersupply thats around 160watts of load on the PSU, 95% of that probably on the 12v rail, or around 13amps continous load.
 
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