Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: S-99 on May 27, 2007, 02:22:05 am
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Ok. For me this is quite an unusual problem, but not so much my fault as my motherboard manufacturer :)
Ok, so when i built my new computer last summer, i got a biostar k8t890-a9 socket 939 motherboard (this is the main culprit).
The rest of the computer consists of this:
athlon64 3200+ 2ghz (not overclocked because that's one thing my mobo can't do) :)
1.5gb dual channel ddr :)
80gb hdd :nod:
160gb hdd :D
7600gt geforce ;)
3 port firewire card :)
a usb keyboard :)
ps2 mouse :blah:
speakers :nod:
350W 120mm fan psu :no:
a usb flash drive that is my iaudio g3 mp3 player ;7
and 4 usb saitek gamepads ;7
All good stuff,(overall i built a great machine for 510$...110$ of that being xp which i could have done without :blah:) but what i was talking here is a problem i've had for the past 2 months. Well, my motherboard didn't do what all other motherboard manuals do, which is state the minimum wattage for the required psu to run the board. So since my board didn't tell me what it needed, i looked to my video card which said 350W psu minimum, and i was like ok, i'll get that since i don't have much more money. So, it's lasted from the summer until 2 months ago. This system had a couple of random shutdowns in the past, not random restarts, but random shutdowns in the past, but since 2 months ago hit for me, it's just gotten really bad. Something tells me the motherboard wants more wattage than 350W, given how much **** i have plugged in and use, and the fact that i can't play 3d accelerated games unless i really want to cause a random shutdown. Something tells me the manual for my biostar board should have said some kind of power requirement which it didn't, and that 350W minimum for my geforce just is a bad minimum. Oh also if i stress my cpu that will cause a random shutdown too. I now have my computer on for short periods of time during the day as opposed to on for the week doing what i want.
Given what i have for my equipment i definitely know that 350W is not good enough, but i don't want to buy another power supply and have it not be enough either, you know i don't want to just buy a 400W and still have the same problem. Anyway, what is the proper power supply i should have for my computer, coming from all of those who have similar setups as mine such as same video card, or people with just some knowledge on what i should buy. I mean i am a good computer builder, but this is just not cool of biostar not putting the power requirement in the manual so i could gage what i needed.
So what wattage psu should i buy?
And no i'm not buying a cheap paperweight to hold me over, a cheap paperweight of a psu is not what's inside my machine now(good 45$ psu deceiving piece of **** :no:). :hopping:
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First of all I would say that be careful with the wattage numbers. The wattages you should be watching are the wattages for each output line (3.3 V, 5 V, 12 V). It doesn't help to have 430 W power supply if a single line is overloaded.
I had a similar problem a month ago when my old motherboard partially burned (don't ask!). I salvaged the old 350 W power supply and bought an used Radeon 9800 and Nvidia2 chipset motherboard with Athlon 3200+ processor (Socket A) or something like that (meaning the processor). The old power supply tended to overheat causing forced shutdowns after which the computer cooled down additional 15 mins before electricity connection was restored. Granted, my old PSU was probably weak on the 3.3 V and 5 V lines (or then again 12 V line), and could not provide enough power for even that configuration. Changing the power supply to 430 W one removed the heating related shutdown problems (and it was not that expensive, say 60-70 €) and now the PSU is not even heating up.
I would say that if you match the power consumption of your motherboard with the output capabilities of the PSU, you will only find endless trouble. Putting a high load even on a specific line of the PSU will drastically decrease the expected lifetime of the PSU. Better to add a safety factor so that no output line is overloaded in any situation.
So in conclusion, I would say aim for either 400 W or 430 W power supply.
Mika
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Well generally MOBO's don't use much power themselves, but going by the minimum of one component doesn't seem like a solid call for me... :p
But, as Mika said, stable power from all lines is usually more important than having a lot of power surplus in general. In short - get a PSU that can continuously product your system's peak power consumption on all lines.
As far as component wattages go, I'd leave that 350W margin for the GPU alone, then 70 or 90W for the CPU (Venice Athlon64 max power is 67W IIRC, San Diegos can eat up to 89W) and then some for the other stuff and peripherals. 430-450 W in simple add-up calculation; depending on your USB and FireWire device power consumption, 500W might not hurt either.
Then again, I have very similar system (MSI MS-7184 Socket939 motherboard, Athlon64 3200+ (venice), 3 GB dual channel DDR, one 200GB SATA HD, one 320GB E-IDE HD, GeForce 7600GT) and I haven't had any random restarts even though I "only" have a 400W true power PSU. It's this one: Nexus NX-4096 (http://www.nexustek.nl/nx4090_real_silent_power_supply.htm). I don't have as many peripherals connectd, though...
But, as was already said, it's more important to have guaranteed continuous power than loads of surplus wattage (which won't be used anyway). The problem is, many cheapo PSU manufacturers don't announce the continuous power output but instead some rounded number between continuous and peak output power. Other problem is voltage fluctuations which can make the PC shutdown or even destroy components... It's the other thing you should be interested in isntead of surplus wattage. Is your PSU of any known quality brand?
My advice is the same as Mika's - go for quality. Count the component peak wattage together, add some surplus but not too much (no use in paying for 100 or 200 extra watts of power that is never used eh?) and then get a PSU that really produces that power continuously and with minimum voltage fluctuations. I can only say I've been extremely happy with my Nexus PSU, since it not only keeps my system stable and running, it's also extremely quiet.
And pay attention to the amperes on the voltage rails as well... PArticularly the 12V and +-5V rails. I don't remember the recommended numbers but there are a lot of sites that have good instructions on them...
By the way, my MOBO (or rather, BIOS) can't really do anything to clocks either but I found a nice application called ClockGen that can be used to boost the FSB clocks via XP... so I now have the FSB set to 220 MHz, and subsequently the processor clock went to 2200 MHz due to tenfold multiplyer. What's nice is that it also boosts PCI and PCI-e frequency and thus their memory bandwidth. It's only 10% increase but what the hell... :rolleyes:
You might also want to check if your 7600GT can be clocked to any degree. I don't know if there's any overclocking utilities in NVidia's Linux drivers though... but just for the record, my card runs stable and cool clocked to 720/1750 MHz for core/memory, but I usualyl prefer to run it at it's factory clocks (650/1600 MHz) because at least on my system, the CPU starts to form a bottleneck anyway before the GPU. :blah:
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http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
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Yeah i shall clock my 7600gt more someday, it's already been a speedy stable mofo in all my games that i haven't need to overclock, but i know i can if i wish. But, my psu is a Coolmax AP400X(CX-350B). Believe me i went for quality where i could with a psu. The damn thing has 3 fan speeds, low, for when you want the system quiet(never could put it on that from day one unless you really want the computer to shutdown), dynamic(where the fan speed changes depending on system load, so you're system will be quiet if not doing much, or will be noisy when you are...it didn't work very good), and then there is max...you can guess what setting i leave my psu fan speed on at all times :D
Anyway i took an extra look inside my computer, and i have all of the power cables hooked up to front panel led's, 2 hard drives, 2 dvd/cd burning drives, an extra fan, a floppy drive, and of course the psu is hooked up the motherboard. But anyway, like i said, i don't have one strand of power connectors powering as much as i can, All the power cables appear to be divided evenly between all of the devices, so i do not have one power cable powering everything.
Anyway, the number one thing that will shutdown my computer is 3d accelerated games, 2nd is processor intensive stuff(i can't get halfway through encoding and compressing copied dvd's anymore), 3rd is usb devices(i unplugged all the rest, but one thing that makes my computer shutdown is when i have my iaudio g3 which is also a flash drive hooked up).
So with some minor research i found i want a psu with 12v rail, 5v rail, and 3.3v rail(of course that's like standard ****) but with like 30-33amps per each rail? And i want like 400-450W. This is what i understand from the suggestions :)
After that, what's some good brands of power supply?
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I recommend this one (http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=PS-E5150GH) to most people these days. It still offers unbeatable quality and value at its price point. If you can spend a little more, this (http://www.buy.com/prod/corsair-hx520w-520w-sli-certified-modular-atx-power-supply/q/loc/101/203270716.html) is a bit more powerful and also a great deal if you use Google Checkout to get the full discount.
Note that the wattage ratings are largely irrelevant. The most important thing to look at on power supplies is the brand, followed by the 12V current ratings and how they are distributed.
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
This thing is not very reliable. According to it, my system should need 468W on full load, but the highest I've ever seen it go is 232W. :p
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Yeah i avoided that calculator as i can not really duplicate my system setup in there. Also i will try to stick with the brand you recommended, but **** if i'm going to spend 68$ on a psu, hell, i'm not even going to approach 50$, because i don't have to. 500W is a little much, and unecessary for what i'm looking for, i'll probably end up with 450W psu, and yes going to pay attention to the 12v current ratings. Pretty much i'm going to get the best for what's under 45$. I need a power supply, not a golden nugget, and i'm not use to paying 68$ for power supplies, hell one reason i havent bought a dual core for my machine is because cpu's are getting more and more expensive, my athlon 64 was already 90$.
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There are only a couple of decent choices under $50. This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104953) and this (http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=PS-EN5240G&show=p) are probably good bets, although I don't know a lot about these particular units.
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I would advise to recheck your calculations. 33 Amps for each rail would effectively mean:
33A * 12V = 396 W
33A * 5V = 165 W
33A * 3.3V = 108.9 W
Totalling: ~ 670 W, this seems to be a quite high number.
Speaking of 3D games, I think most of the graphics cards use 12 V line nowadays. I also had the same thing when I had a weaker PSU, the first thing to shutdown the system was whenever 3D acceleration was needed. Also unpacking RARs caused the same thing, I believe that's related then to the 3.3 V rail that the processor uses. But of this I would say ask a confirmation from someone who works with computers.
Mika
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Yes, all of the more power-hungry components run almost exclusively off 12V now (processors, video cards, hard drives and optical drives). The ratings on the other two lines aren't really important since most power supplies will have more than enough.
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Well i'll probably get a 400W or 430W since that's about all my money is going to get me. On the other hand i took a look at my dads computer, he has a star tech 400W powering like 4 90mm fans, 2 hard drives, geforce 7800 agp, p4 overclocked to 3ghz, 2gb of ram, 1cd burner, 1 dvd burner that he never uses, a huge ass steering wheel, a huge ass joystick, very big speakers, and an under the chair subwoofer so he can get more into his games. The ****ing guy is 62 and plays sims and racing games hardcore. He's even got a little sensor at the top of his monitor that reacts to this certain hat he has that lets you look around the cockpit of the airplane with your own head instead of a pov hat. Anyway his 400W does do the job, and i can see it doing it for me since he has more powerful **** and more stuff plugged in than i do.