Is My 550w Too Small Now?

Buggaton · 29 Jan 2015 at 16:06

Chaps!

I'm concerned with my recent upgrades my psu might now be powerful enough to run everything. I've been experiencing some slow downs and errors but I think they could be other things. I don't know how to work out the wattage need of my pc.

I'm running a 550w OCT ZT Series with the following

1 3gb HDD
1 512GB SSD
1 Xonar d2x audio device
6 2gb sticks of ram
1 i7 920 2.6 overclocked to 3 (but could easily go higher with my. ..)
1 i80 liquid cooling heat sink
1 r9 270x gfx card

is that too much or should by psu be fine? The xonar keeps giving me error messages about the power not being plugged in but I've noticed no issues with the sound and a good bit of google let me know this was a common issue with the xonar d2x.

ChugNorris · 29 Jan 2015 at 17:51

The wattage is fine and more than enough for your spec, however the ZT 550W is made by Great Wall, they aren't particularly great in all honesty. It would be advisable if you continue to have issues to replace with a good quality Superflower unit such as the HX550 Golden Green.

pastymuncher · 29 Jan 2015 at 19:21

While it's not a top end unit it does have a strong single 12v rail of 45A giving you 540w. It's more than enough for any current single gpu setup and you have loads of power to spare.

ghost.florian · 29 Jan 2015 at 21:40

The 550W is enough for your system. While not a particularly great unit, it's adequate for the system you are powering.

Your sound card errors are coming from something else (drivers maybe).

Buggaton · 29 Jan 2015 at 23:41

Awesome guys I thought as much. Many thanks!