More power needed?

pkryder · 13 Mar 2011 at 11:14

Hi guys

I recently replaced my faulty X58-UD5 for GA-X58A-UD7, I've also upgraded my 5770 for a 6970. I'm now struggling to get my i7 920 back to the 4Ghz I used to have. I can get what seems to be a stable 3.6Ghz but am struggling beyond that.

I'm running off a Corsair TX 650 and Im wondeing if its up to the job now Ive got a much more power hungry graphics card. When the PC falls over I havent been getting any BSOD messages to help (auto restart is off) the PC just shuts off and restarts.

I used http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp and this recommends that I need a minimum of 628 watts and recommends 678 watts. I have read that PSU's can usually supply more than the rated wattage so I'd hope it would be enough. But the PSU fan sounds like it goes to full speed when Im at 3.8GHz or above and running Prime with my old board and graphics the fan noise never changed, which makes me think it might be struggling.

Any help / advice appreciated.

cjgardens · 13 Mar 2011 at 11:21

There good psu.s them calculators are not that good. Maybe that board is just not a good clocker. Have you still got your old card so you can test clocks with that

pkryder · 13 Mar 2011 at 11:25

No I sold the old card so I have no alternative hardware to test with. I'd be pretty gutted if my new £300 MB can't handle an overclock that my older and cheaper MB could

cjgardens · 13 Mar 2011 at 11:33

Hopefully its not the board as you Dont get much better. I had a striker 2 extreme and a q9550 and had it clocked to 4ghz with good temps and that was as far as i could go so i bought a gigabyte ud3 which were supposed to be the best clocker for the 775 chip set could only get it to 3.8 so i bought a asus p5qpro and still couldn't get past 4ghz was well upset. Although 4ghz on a i7 should be easy. Can you not borrow a low end card.

Lot of money to send if you buy a psu and its not that

RJC · 13 Mar 2011 at 11:41

In terms of power your rig would not pull much more than 400w ~ full load, my system in the my rig below pulls 500w with Prime and Furmark running, also with 2 x 5850 gpu's in there previously this pulled 430w~

Have tried mem test on your memory to ensure these are not acting up, also what speed are they operating at.

pkryder · 13 Mar 2011 at 11:51

I haven't tried mem test no. I'll download it. I've got the memory linked to BCLK so at 4Ghz it would be running at 1600mhz which is its rated speed. I've set the DRAM voltage to 1.64v

pastymuncher · 13 Mar 2011 at 13:00

PSU calculators do not show you the load pull of your rig. What they do is recommend a wattage psu. TX650 should be at least 250w more than your pc would ever pull at the wall.

pkryder · 13 Mar 2011 at 13:38

Thanks for the input guys I think (fingers crossed) I'm getting there. Maybe I was just clutching at straws, I've never heard my PSU get loud so it seemed odd behaviour to me.
I'm now at 4Ghz and it hasn't crashed yet currently running Prime I guess I just need to not be impatient and take my time. I clearly don't yet grasp the intricacies of Overclocking as it seems very odd to me to get 4Ghz I had to reduce the vcore from what was stable at 3.7Ghz.