jepherz

What happens if you have too many powerful stuff in your computer and not enough PSU power? Does this cause problems like crashes? Or does it just lag you down?

According to the link in one of the stickies above, I have just a little over my PSU limit....

Mac Daddy

You would most likely experience freezing and shutdowns from inadequate PSU power. On the lag it could contribute but I think the above symptoms would be more apparent ...

Are you getting BSOD's or hard shutdowns?

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kris23

a weak PSU would show random shutdowns

a poor PSU can be everything from freezing to BSODing to dead hardware but PSUs that poor are hard to come by

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jepherz

no...

I have a 500watt earthwatt antec PSU and a gigabyte ga-ep35-ds3p mobo which is supposed to be energy efficient(says dynamic energy saver on the box). Maybe this contributes to it? That site says I need 525...

i dont get blue screens...my computer did freeze up on me while installing a game which was like 3-5gb in size, forgot what it was...takes forever to install...I dont know if its supposed to.

Mac Daddy

I would say as a rule of thumb you should not exceed 2/3 of your PSU's "actual" power output under maximum load. A lot of them only allow a percentage of certain rails at one time as opposed to all rails running at max power at the same time(True Power).

If I had your system I would be running no less than an 800W PSU or say 600W Truepower.

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IvanV

What are your actual specs, jepherz? Your PSU is made by a fairly good manufacturer and 500W is a lot of power. There certainly are systems that wouldn't be enough for, but if you look at hardware reviews, the system power consumption rarely significantly exceeds 300W under load and that's measured at the socket, so unless you have a multi-GPU setup or something really unusua, 500W should be enough.

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kris23

antec PSUs have a real high failure rate.... thats why i dont recommend them. even the quattro line

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CDsDontBurn

what kind and how many gfx card(s) do you have in your machine?

if it occurred while installing a game, i'd look at the PSU first definately. then the next other component i would look at would be the HDD cable, HDD itself, and possibly the HDD controller (if there is a tool out there to diagnose it, somebody could help you find it).

if it's the PSU, a GOOD 600w should be adequate, but i'd say get a good 700w at least.

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kris23

he has a 4870 i believe

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Judas

for all my typical machines.... i use 500watt 2x18amp 12rail PSUs..... 32-36amps on a typical everyday machine is relatively good.

However for more of the higherend gamer machine, 600-700watt quad rail psu's with a minimum 4x16amp 12 rails is what i deal with.


but having inaddequate power can mean slow downs, weird sudden intermitent freezing that comes and goes..... full on lockups.... unexpected shutdowns and even causing things to run extremely hot.

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jepherz

what are rails? I thought PSU was just watts...thats all i look at.

I thought antec was good quality. First computer I built I bought an antec case and it had a PSU in it, then I bought another antec case for my mom which has this PSU that i'm using irght now.(i swaped PSUs with her). I think I do get those temporary freezings...though i'm not sure. It lags when I have photoshop and dreamweaver on together or something like that...maybe its just a RAM issue

I;m pretty broke right now though...does this harm my computer if it does these things? If not, then I'm just gonna leave things the way they are...theres been no random shut downs yet..

nicnik

believe that Antec psu's have a high fail rate. I've had 2 Antecs that both fails within 2 years. And I've only ever had 2 PSU's fail on me. That says quite allot. Both were in the Truepower line.

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Mac Daddy

The wattage rating of the PSU is the total power and is derived from Power = Voltage x Amperage. The total power is made up of power ratings for all the power rails 3.3V, 5V and 12V and some have 3 or 4 12V rails (or more).

If you are not getting hard shutdowns and just lagging I would just keep an eye on things as mentioned. It is so hard to estimate the exact power you are using as devices in your system don't necessarily use power at the same time.

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Judas

erm..... the longer a machine runs teetering on the edge of being underpowered.. the more likely damage can be done over time.

Get the exact specs on the PSU you've got... post them.. they should state the RAIL and and then the AMPs for each..

like
3.3v 26a
5.0v 20a
12v1 16a
12v2 16a
-3.3v 0.5a
-5v 0.9a
-5v sb 0.6a
-12v 2.5a

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Mac Daddy

Yes that would help us out Judas and after that I have a test for him to run that will show what the rails are running at under load .. OCCT ..

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