Spec me a PSU please?

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2004
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Écosse
I've currently got a Coolermaster M520 Realpower 520W in my system which consists of the components in my sig below which is mildly overclocked. I'm running 1 x OCZ 60Gb Vertex 2E with my O/S ( W7 Home Premium ) on it plus a further 2 x 500Gb SATA drives, 4 aux case fans and a Firewire card. 1 x TPlink wireless adapter and a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse the base station of which plugs into a USB port.

Lately with a few new games ( Max Payne 3, BF3 and Saints Row 3 ) the PC has been just shutting down randomly and restarting. It's like it does this as soon as any load is applied to it power wise. Fine doing everything else from day to day stuff like surfing the net, Word docs, using CS3 etc, it only seems to do this when attempting to play a recent game. I'm thinking my PSU isn't up to scratch and is causing the issue. As far as I know the 9800GTX+ needs a 500W PSU with 24 amps on the 12v rails. The Coolermaster does 19 amps ( I think ) on the rails so I'm underpowered from the off. I used to have an ATI 1900XT in this system and it played games ok, it's only recently that the 9800GTX+ has been tripping over when trying to run them although as far as I can recall it ran games fine when I first fitted it to my system. I was going to use Speedfan or something similar to see what the power output looks like, will do that this afternoon and report back with the findings.

So, do you reckon a new PSU would be prudent given the difference between the 19 amps and 24amps on the 12v rails?. If so, can someone recommend me a good PSU with good performance on the rails for a budget of around the £60-£70 mark?.

Thanks.
 
Cheers for the recommendation, looks like very good value.

However, I think I'm getting this amps on the 12v rails thing all wrong. The 9800GTX+ would appear to require 24amps on the 12v rail for power. The M520 PSU I currently run supplies 19amps on two 12v rails. So that's 36 amps in total, right?.

So in actual fact I'm well over the 24 amps required by the graphics card?. :confused:
 
It's 38 :) You have to be careful with that. The CPU also feeds off the 12V rail. 25A sound like a lot for the GPU. Seems that it is based on the PCIE max specs :

PSUs can be complicated beasts, especially multi-rails. Now most of them favour single-rail design for simplicity, and rely on good voltage regulation to deal with cross-loads and power spikes.

- 150W from the PCIE slot.
- 75W for each PCIE 6-pin connectors.
- 150W for each PCIE 8-pin connectors.

Making a total of potentially 300W for the 9800GTX+ (two PCIE 6-pin connectors, right?), making 25A on 12V. But that's an overestimation imo. All benches look at around 300W total system power usage.

But yeah, 38A is OK.

You sure it isn't driver related? Overheating?

I'd run Unigine with afterburner to monitor the temps and everything. And Maybe HWMonitor for voltages.
 
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Yeah, 2 x 6 pin connectors. I haven't ran HWMonitor or Speedfan to see what is on the rails as such, will do so. The weird thing is I just ran Max Payne 3 and it played fine this time. Only difference I made to it at the start was go into the graphics settings and change from DX 10 to DX 9 mode. Runs fine in DX 9 mode at high detail. Change back to DX10 mode though and it crashes. :confused:
 
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