Random freezes thinking of buying new parts from OC advice needed please particularly on PSU

Sacrosanct

Sacrosanct

Sacrosanct

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Joined
23 Nov 2011
Posts
74
Hi everyone,

I've been having problems with random freezing on my PC and I haven't been able to figure out the exact cause. It started when I updated my ASUS bios and Prime95 and OCCT both freeze instantly when I run them.

So, I am going to replace some parts one by one to upgrade the PC and hopefully fix the lockup problem. I noticed when I had the case open I have an Alpha Power ATX-750 PSU. The PSU that came with the PC died a short while ago and a local guy came around and put this one in. I googled this PSU on the net and it's a cheap £30 job. I've heard it's a bad idea to use cheap PSU's so I am going to start here to try solve the freezing problem. Is there any way I can check how much power is actually coming out of this PSU without buying accessories etc?

Anyway, can any of you recommend a good PSU. I am on a tight budget unfortunately. My PC as it stands is as follows:

ASUS M4A79T Deluxe
4 gigs Crucial DDR3 1333 RAM - will be upgrading to 8
Phenom II X2 550 BE processor - will be upgrading to quad core
ATI HD5750 - will be upgrading depending on PSU

The PC is mostly used for games. All I want to do is to be able to play games at high detail at 1920 x 1200 so will probably end up going for something like the 560 ti.

I'm guessing I need about a 650 watts PSU is that about right? I have no idea which PSU's are good ones but I know there are a lot of bad ones. Any help greatly appreciated. I am on a budget but will pay what I have to for a reasonable reliable PSU. Thanks.
 
Thanks Lemin. Can you tell me what's the difference between a modular PSU and a non modular one? Do you recognise the PSU I've got is it as bad as I think it is? Thanks for the reply.
 
Modular has loose cables, so you only use the ones you need. Great for saving birds nests ;)
Yes your psu is worse than you think, bin it !
 
Thanks Lemin. I'm considering the Antec you linked to. Is 650watts reasonably future proof? I'm not ever going to have a monster graphics card in this system. I'm looking at upgrading to something like the Phenom II X4 965 BE processor as it seems to be cheap I don't think I can afford the new 980 so I'll be looking at a graphics card that won't be bottlenecked by the future CPU.

I think I should explain my plan a bit better or I'll be asking a 1000 questions and confusing everyone including myself.

I've been a lurker here for a long time but never posted. I've decided to go through upgrading parts one by one and I'd like to buy them all here just so I have one place to go to if I have any problems in the future so bearing that in mind:

Recommendations for good inexpensive quad core for my system.
I want to go to 8 gigs of ram, 2 x 4 simms is 1333 speed good enough?
Which graphics card? I currently use ATI HD5750 which I know is not good I want something good value that's significantly better.

I'm not just laying all these questions on you Lemin I'm asking anyone who might be reading who may be able to help :)
 
Okay so far I'm looking at £255 for PSU, graphics card and RAM which is better than I expected. I can't see the X4 965 listed on OC but they have the 980 for £134. What does the 140W mean for the processor btw?

I'm going a bit over budget now I'll have to think about it a bit more. Hopefully there might be OC deals on some of these things soon. Thanks again for the help Lemin.
 
The 955 takes the price down a bit. Will that bottleneck the 560ti in any way? Would I have to overclock?

I have an admission to make here by the way. I updated the bios to 3303 (the latest one) because I wanted to unlock the extra cores on the X2 550. I used the ASUS update utility and flashed the bios in Windows 7 at the desktop. Ever since then I have been getting random freezes and lockups forcing a reboot every time. Also I used the ASUS core unlocker press 4 at start up to unlock the cores but because of the freezes I loaded system defaults to go back to 2 cores.

Could I have damaged the motherboard in any way by updating the bios in Windows? I still can't find out what is causing these freezes and am worried about spending a lot of money and having the same problem. Prime95 hangs instantly on the blend test and OCCT hangs too. I rolled back the bios to 3205 but this time did it from the bios using EZflash.

I feel so stupid having done all this and don't really know what to do next.
 
I have another question. Going from the Phenom II X2 dual core to the X4 quad core would I need an extra cooler or something? I don't even know what kind of cooler I currently have, assuming I have one.
 
Sorry to bump this but some of the stuff I want to buy is on Black Friday deals which ends I'm guessing tomorrow?

Any comments on whether it's worth buying all this given the problems I described with freezing etc and can anyone tell me if I can put the quad core straight in there in place of the dual core without buying a cooler or something?

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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