Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

[dred210]

Basically i am a overclocker/tweaker but also a cheap ass and if i can save myself from a $100 psu then i will. =) Right now i am running my rig and its working fine. The question is.. Is my PSU holding my overclock back? Here are my specs.

AMD Phenom II 710 x3
Wintec 4GB DDR1333 running at 1666
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P motherboard
AMD/ATI 4870x2 graphics card
Cool IT Freezone ELITE cpu cooler (modified to chill my waterloop.)
1 sata optical DVD burner
3x hard drives
Antec 550watt Neopower (check out review for specs) Antec NeoPower 550 Power Supply Review | Hardware Secrets

So far i can get an overclock of 3.575ghz at DDR3 1450 or so. It seems rock solid stable at this setting as i have been playing several games for several hours. however i simply cannot go beyond this. I need to know if my psu is causing this.

When i first turn on the pc i can hear my fans vary in rpm before it posts could that mean the psu is overstressed and can barely handle the load? can anyone recommend a good way to verify this?

My current settings are
Multiplier: x13
FSB: 275mhz
cpu voltage: 1.525
I have the HT throttled down to 1500mhz for now.
if i increase the fsb to 276 i get no post.

It feels like i am hitting a FSB wall. I can post with multiplier of 10 and fsb of 280 which is 2.8ghz but when i use multiplier of 10 with 300fsb for 3ghz i get no post.

Does this mean my motherboard is at fault or just a powersupply not having enough juice?

[Nickel020]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

It looks like the your PSU is based on the same design as this one and that Neopower Blue 650w got a really bad score.
I can't guarantee you'll be able to overclock better, but it's quite likely. You can't really tell which part is the problem until you exchange it.

[MaxFX]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

Being a cheap ass well just say, it can and will bit you in the ass sooner or later ;)

The best thing to do is read reviews as thats all what it is. a crappy PSU will drow down your whole comp.

I just upped to a Corsair 1000W as I had no choise and will feel a little future proof :D
But my comp are droowing much watt as it's an Q6600 o/c to 3.4Ghz and then GTX 285 witch of course I o/c to and a 8800GT 512Mb for PhysX and lets just say that it will take just under 700W when I got my mates amperemeter and checked it under load. the best thing you can do is get a amperemeter!

[dred210]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

Thanks for replies.

Nickel020: I believe the review you pointed out too is probably the exact same design as mine but with a 120mm fan as oppsed to the 80mm fan mine currently has. Also mine was rated at 550watt. In the review i linked in first post that is a review of my exact model and build quality and screenshots looked a lot better than the review you linked. Also they gave it a very high raiting. So i would hope that mine being an older model and what i consider to be a more quality look doesn't have those build quality flaws of the neoblue 120mm version.

They just came out with a new version of amd overdrive so it supports my triple core now. Here are some screenshots of the specs i am currently running. I am going to try overclocking in windows and see how far i can get.

I would like to get your opinion on the voltages screenshot and if you think the numbers look or ok or are sub standard.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6214/cpuspeedo.jpg

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/126/voltages.jpg

Thanks

[dred210]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

Update: I can post 3.575ghz at 275 fsb but i failed the amd overdrive stability test after 45 minutes of testing.

I ran 270 fsb which is 3.510ghz and that passed 1 hour of amd stability testing.

When raising the FSB above 275 my computer refuses to post. you hear the fans spooling up and down trying to post but doesn't. (is this indicative i need a more powerful psu?)

Also when going for 3.7ghz or sometimes just by raising the fsb to 310 and putting a multiplier 10 (3.1ghz) not only does the system refuse to post but as it starts posting the psu will shut itself off.

Do you think this proves i need a more powerful psu? I know hardly anyone on here has the same motherboard as me (damn intel fans. hehe ) But if anyone does or knows someone who has got my motherboard above 275 fsb without any issues this will help convince me to change out my psu.

My motherboard is the gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P. I am already very close to picking up a psu at the store i just don't want to buy a new one hook it up all and find out i have the same issues and my old psu was perfectly fine.

The psu's i been watching are all single rail psus. The corsair hx 750 is a great psu but i really want modular. the only single rail psu i could find that is modular is silverstone dacathlon series and thats quite expensive and the psu is always quite a bit deeper that i like.

Cooler master 700w single rail psu that is also modular looks like what i want but wish it had more amps.. i was hoping to get a 60amp replacement singlerail. coolermater is only 50+amps and the 700w is the highest they offer.

Just to list the kind of load i have on my psu here are my specs pasted from the top.
AMD Phenom II 710 x3
Wintec 4GB DDR1333 running at 1666
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P motherboard
AMD/ATI 4870x2 graphics card
Cool IT Freezone ELITE cpu cooler (modified to chill my waterloop.)
1 sata optical DVD burner
3x hard drives
Antec 550watt Neopower (check out review for specs) Antec NeoPower 550 Power Supply Review | Hardware Secrets

Thanks

[PrairieDawg]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

Not sure how many opinions you want to ignore but since you asked the bottom line is that you are risking a power supply failure due to the fact that you are running underpowered. ATIs own specs call for a minimum of 650 watt PSU ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series - System Requirements . A quality PSU is probably the most important part of any PC. I understand the wish to be frugal but have you ever seen how many other parts a PSU can take with it when it goes? Saving a $100 or so now may eventually cost you several hundred more.

[Nickel020]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

@PrairieDawg
The ATI and Nvidia PSU recommendations are somewhat useless, ast they assume the worst case, which is a no name unit. And no name units usually never come close to reaching their claimed specs, therfore ATI and Nvidia have to inflate the "offcial requitements" as well. Look at the power draw of those video cards in an overclocked quad core ystem and they draw about half of their PSU "requirement".

@dred210
I have absolutely no experience with Phenom overclocking, so I can't tell you whether your PSU limits you. I can just tell you that it may and that I would not have bought that PSU ;P
You should look aaround at some places like Xtreme Systems and see/ask what people around there achieve and whether they think your CPU should be able to clock higher or not.

[PrairieDawg]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

Nickel020 I am well aware that most PSU specs are somewhat overblown. My opinions may have been a bit overstated. However dred210 was asking for opinions and I am of the opinion that a lot of issues are caused by underpowered systems and have seen personally the outcome on several occasions. We are not (as I am sure you are aware) talking about a stock, off the shelf POS computer. Going under spec is always a bit of risk but overclocking with underspec parts does tend to increase the problem somewhat.

[kick]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

Well I cant find the psu link I was looking for nm.

It was by a electronics engineer.if i fnd it tomorrow ill link it.The gist of it was,there are no "true" dual rail psu's.
They are all a single rail split into 2.1 rail for cpu, one rail for everything else.
It seems like if you are running 2 hi power gx cards you might need something in excess of 500 watt,but under that its hard to come up with a situation where you need more than 500.
Oclocking a power hungry cpu could obviously load the other "rail".

Like on a 1000w psu there are 100w set aside for 5 and 3 volt items.Then 450 w for cpu and 450w for everything else.

A decent 500w psu should run anything especially as manufacturers are gearing more towards low power components.Twin hi end graphics cards might need a bit more but thats more because they load one side of the "dual" ,apparently really a single rail with seperate amperage limitations.

Unless its a v old psu with more power to the 3 n 5 voutputs.

It seems like a bit of a marketing ploy to me a psu capable of say 40 amp 12v output but its 12v rail split in 2 with a seperate amperage limitation of 20 on each rail.
So if you are heavy into one side ..graphics cards loads of hdds.fans n leds n whistles you might need 250w on that side and so need a 600w psu.
100w say for the 3 and 5 volts output 250 for all the bits n pieces and then 250 w for the cpu side.
If I find the link Ill edit.
I thik I found the article when i was checking around thru,molex adapters for the new extra,in excess of 6 pin power for gx cards..8 pin cpu connectors etc.

[dred210]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

Well i got a new psu. The down side is that i still seem to be FSB limited. =( my highest overclock i can get is about 3.6ghz and thats probably somewhat unstable i have to go 3.5ghz to be stable.

The good news is that i think my new psu has a little more headroom and the voltages do look a little better from amd overdrive. I was able to get a few mhz higher. just no where near where i wanted.

This is my new psu. Overclock3D.Net :: Review :: Cooler Master Silent Pro 700w Modular PSU :: Conclusion

I picked it up on sale for $115. I got mainly cause i wanted something modular on a single 12v rail and i didn't want the psu to be too deep as it might hit my radiator. This fit that perfectly i just wish they offered 800w version 700w while still good enough for my rig i would have liked slightly more headroom.

here is a screenshot of the voltages on the new psu it does look like a slight improvement over my old psu.

Old psu voltages

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/126/voltages.jpg

New psu voltages

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/5336/newpsuvoltage.jpg

So yeah it kind of disapoints me a little since my little 550watt antec psu was handling my load and i could have kept using it and saved money.. but pushing it as hard as i was who knows how long it would have last.

Now that my psu is better and i still have a crappy overclock all i can think of now is why does my gigabyte motherboard crap out at anything over 275fsb.. i find is very fustrating.

Another bug with this gigabyte motherboard is that it seems sometimes i can change only 1 setting in my bios and it could be a really trivial one like changing my sata controller from raid to ahci and the bios will save and fail to post. then ihave to go last known good settings.

Its like sometimes when i make changes to the bios no matter what i do.. it won't post. it seems completely random. and its very annoying. I hope gigabyte releases a new bios for my board soon.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Need help verifying if i need to upgrade my psu.

Your system will thank you in the long run for a better PSU so don't feel bad.

Hmm, you cannot just change from AHCI to RAID, at least not do so and try to boot thru. But ya that should not cause a post failure.

So, what do you find around the web for a average FSB of that CPU that users are getting? Just wondering how close you actually are to this area.