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Can a bad PSU cause performance to degrade over time?

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  • Gaming
  • Power Supplies
  • CPUs
  • Games
  • Components
  • Performance
Last response: in Components
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September 5, 2014 4:22:47 PM

I tried this on another post but didn't get many answers but after some research and thinking of my own, I came to the conclusion that it could be the psu, basicly, sometime ago I was having good framerates in every game 45-50 in skyrim on highs at around 85-95% cpu usage, and around 60-80 on DMC, but recently all of the games I play, i've been having 98-100% cpu usage, in every single game that I play, even sims 3, I could play that game perfectly (60fps loccked) and its hitting the 98% wall almost every minute now (40fps locked and it stutters and freezes to 15 at times). I've did everything, cleared the cmos, added thermal paste, made sure the cpu was well seated, malware/antiviurs scan, everything. Cpu usually runs at 40-45 idle, i've seen the motherboard hit the 65c a few days ago and it came to my mind that it can be the voltage that the psu is giving. If the cpu doesnt get enough power it will heat up from low amperage resistance which will put the cpu in a throttle back safety situtation, so maybe thats whats happening to me?

Here are my specs;

Athlon x2 245 2.9ghz (not overclocked)
4gb ddr3 1066
Gigabyte 6670 2gb ddr3 (not overclocked)
Seagate 500gb 7200rpm hdd
1360x768 samsung monitor
Eurotech 420w psu (I know its a shitty one but it was cheap and at the time I thought, since my components dont use much power, that i'd be fine with it, maybe I made a mistake that day.)

I know its a weak computer but I was planning to give it to my nephew to play some league of legends (before this all happened I was getting around 80-100 fps on it at high settings, now its 45-60)
ps: For some reason people doubt that the fps that I have are the correct ones for my system, I dont know why is that, but they are, it would make no sense to lie, unless if I wanted a headache.
This is the printscreen of what I got from HWmonitor after doing a skyrim run for this post.
http://gyazo.com/60f5551df4d8f1694e8ed2d073746d74

More about : bad psu performance degrade time

a c 251 4 Gaming
a c 154 ) Power supply
a c 252 à CPUs
September 5, 2014 4:29:53 PM

With such a small resolution, the fps doesn't seem that whacky.

You can run utilities like OCCT that will monitor your voltages while stress testing

Also use Furmark and HWiNFO
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September 5, 2014 4:35:59 PM

JackNaylorPE said:
With such a small resolution, the fps doesn't seem that whacky.

You can run utilities like OCCT that will monitor your voltages while stress testing

Also use Furmark and HWiNFO


I know right? And the most I used of the gpu was skyrim that hit the 80% wall, games like league barely hits 40%, so even at 900p I could still have around the same fps on League and DMC (tried it)
And about OCCT, I will try it, thank you.

Edit 1 - I ran OCCT for around 3 minutes or so, and something odd happened, which I dont know if its normal or not, it started pretty well at native rez hitting 73fps dx11 but as soon as TMPIN0 hit 60c the fps dropped to 33-38 for the rest of the 2:20 of the duration of the test, and it stood there until I closed it.
http://gyazo.com/90733f40a1ee47031bf053052e4aca1d this is the print after the test.
I dont know why it doesn't show the minimum fps, but it was 33.
It also shows that my cpu downclocked itself 0,5% by itself.
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a b ) Power supply
a b à CPUs
September 5, 2014 4:37:03 PM

if it's an old shitty PSU it could be the problem. How long have you had it?
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September 5, 2014 4:48:09 PM

Entomber said:
if it's an old shitty PSU it could be the problem. How long have you had it?


It is not, I think I have it since March this year, it might be a faulty one out of the box, but it worked great for the first few months.
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a c 251 4 Gaming
a c 154 ) Power supply
a c 252 à CPUs
September 5, 2014 5:05:28 PM

How did you determine whether it is or it isn't ? What is voltage variation under load ?

The purpose of running OCCT is to look at the voltages under load. Open the graphs it created and look to see what % each voltage varies..... 5% is outta spec and I don't like anything above1% but nothing really starts to get affected (besides overclocks) until ya get above 3 % or so.

OCCT will shut down if you exceed set limits ... look at the alarm / shutdown section in settings and make sure temps are set appropriately
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September 6, 2014 12:39:18 PM

JackNaylorPE said:
How did you determine whether it is or it isn't ? What is voltage variation under load ?

The purpose of running OCCT is to look at the voltages under load. Open the graphs it created and look to see what % each voltage varies..... 5% is outta spec and I don't like anything above1% but nothing really starts to get affected (besides overclocks) until ya get above 3 % or so.

OCCT will shut down if you exceed set limits ... look at the alarm / shutdown section in settings and make sure temps are set appropriately


I apologize for my ignorance in terms of power supplies, I really do not know much at all. I did a test before going to work for sometime, and i'll leave the results here. If someone can find anything out of the ordinary i'd truly apreciate it.

http://gyazo.com/275000390b4f109be67af706ef002b50
http://gyazo.com/2fb632134a197403b733f818c4a3ec7c
http://gyazo.com/4bb94f9ff774ca561359038c116cb610
http://gyazo.com/193126f456bee770bd4d054a4ebb027d
http://gyazo.com/817696b31c5ca67792c16f99b2c8adfc
http://gyazo.com/40598b851ebe0a296a7b1fbe9ea7ac6f
http://gyazo.com/4a24e404ccc547de769917bb837fa697
http://gyazo.com/e03cec81f885422925d9dc59ebce5deb
http://gyazo.com/c9a8b612ef7ebc43c4006f585b86df95
http://gyazo.com/a0eb3f6aaf2218087c73993854095c6d
http://gyazo.com/cc274b3588c662fd1978a6a6b8f059bd
http://gyazo.com/3bb2b6d1bd2213543246a2e571d08511
http://gyazo.com/a1e8f49ef8e7297fd728942fe06d7f14
http://gyazo.com/c6f60d29a2c11f7491fbfd99c3fabc43
http://gyazo.com/2754ed9ee38aa060d459069b4545b0f5
http://gyazo.com/13fed2d989afc31fd92f9f6c11c7b5a1
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