Power supply suitable for new system?

Baddass

Baddass

Baddass

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I've recently upgraded my HTPC, with a new Gigabyte F2A85XM-D3H AMD A85X motherboard, with an AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz CPU. there's an integrated graphics on the CPU, so the only other things i have in the case are 2x HD, 1x SSD HD, 1x Blu Ray player and 1x PCI sound card

this all went in my existing HTPC case which is an Antec Fusion HTPC Case - 430 Watt PSU

it works fine and there's no stability problems but i've noticed an occasional buzzing / high pitch noise from the Power supply every now and again. i'm wondering if it's sufficient to power the new setup or not?The manual for the motherboard seems to suggest 500W or above, but not sure if thats only really to cope with expansion and growth?


one other thing is that the motherboard has an 8 pin ATX 12V connection as well as the normal big 24 pin connection. the PSU only has the 24 pin and then an additional 4 pin ATX 12V (the old board had a 4 pin socket for that) so i've hooked them both up, but wondering if there's any problem with only having a 4 pin ATX 12V connected to what is an 8 pin connection on the new motherboard?
 
There's no way that rig with no GPU, 4 drives and a sound card is pushing 430W - you're probably looking at 200W max.

More likely your PSU is just getting old, or you happen to keep hitting the power draw which causes some cap squeal. It happens sometimes that a certain usage will cause some squeal, and normally you won't notice it, but if you're just unlucky enough to be in the right range then it can be annoying.

If the board wants an 8pin connector, you should really hook that up - they'll normally work without if you don't draw much power through the motherboard, but it's still good practice.

I'd be tempted to just buy a new PSU if you can afford it - the Antec PC bundled PSUs aren't bad, but they're not great either. You could spend ages troubleshooting it (first place I'd try would be here, but it's still not what the PSU was designed for and may not fix it.

It may be worth hooking up a couple of fans to a molex connector - sounds daft, but the extra power draw could pull the PSU out of the nasty whining "zone" and get rid of the immediate problem. Again, though, I'd rather go straight to the core of the problem and get a nice new PSU.
 
More likely your PSU is just getting old, or you happen to keep hitting the power draw which causes some cap squeal. It happens sometimes that a certain usage will cause some squeal, and normally you won't notice it, but if you're just unlucky enough to be in the right range then it can be annoying.
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it does seem to be that, as it doesnt happen all the time, but occasionally it kicks in and i can hear it. didnt do it on my old setup at all. Maybe I'll try hooking up another fan or something to see if that changes the power draw. i've got another 400w PSU from an old rig i can try as well if need be.

If the board wants an 8pin connector, you should really hook that up - they'll normally work without if you don't draw much power through the motherboard, but it's still good practice.
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the PSU doesnt actually have an 8 pin connector, which is the problem i think. it has the old style 4 pin which i've hooked up to the 8 pin connector on the board (using the relevant layout of the pins as described in the manual). are there adpaters or anything which can hook up to the power connectors which do come out of the PSU to convert into the 8 pin the PCU needs?

I would strongly recommend getting a Psu with an 8 pin Cpu power cable.
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can you tel me why they changed from being 4 pin to 8 pin and what the difference is?
 
A the simplest level - the 8pin carries more power. The link in my original post contains a 4-pin to 8-pin adapter, although this doesn't improve your PSU.

The 4 and 8 pin connectors are for CPU power - or specifically, additional power above that supplied by the 24-pin connector. As such, a PC will work with just the 24-pin as long as the CPU doesn't try to pull any more power than can be provided by the 24-pin connector: this will come down to the rail layout on the PSU and the point at which the PSU will refuse to supply any more power over that connector.

To be honest, I doubt that's the problem - unless the CPU is trying to draw too much power through the 4-pin and the PSU is complaining (it will be designed to provide less power on the 4-pin than the motherboard is expecting to be available from an 8-pin). More likely the CPU would simply cut out at high loads.

As above, though, you're unlikely to get to the bottom of the problem without buying a monitor to check what your PC is pulling - at which point you may as well just buy a CPU.

The only other thing I can suggest is to try and narrow down whether it happens at high or low CPU usage. If it's high, the PSU is probably struggling and should be replaced. If it's low, it's the situation I outlined above regarding certain amounts of power being supplied causing the whine.

With PSU's, I prefer not to mess about - if one goes wrong it can blow the rest of your system, better to err on the side of caution.
 
Ok I'll probably try my other psu at some point as it should probably be better. It only has a 4 pin CPU connector too but sounds like that's probably not the issue anyway. Thanks for the advice, appreciated :)
 
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