Can an old 1000w power supply degrade to the point of game freezes?

justMATokay

Reputable
Jan 25, 2016
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4,510
Hello Friends,

My friend has had an old scavenged build for a while now, and has just upgraded to an amd 8 core and new GPU. His old rig had a 1000W psu with odd connectors that looked like amplifier cords, and it has scared me from the beginning considering his old rig couldn't have needed more than 250W at load considering his dual core and gt 550. His new rig includes and AMD 8320E, a GTX 760, 8gb RAM, two HDD's and an SSD(os), He is using the exact same motherboard, Ram, CPU, and GPU that I had, but hes getting this annoying error that freezes his games randomly. It happens quite often and I believe it could be the power supply because its so ancient and high capacity. My other friend seems to think its because he stores his games on a WD 500 GB blue and his OS on an SSD, and the hard drive is being the problem. Please help us! Thanks so much!
 
Solution
An old, and unstable, psu can cause many kinds of system issues. It probably wasn't a quality unit to begin with. Having games on an HDD, and OS on SSD, would not be the cause of an issue, unless one of the drives was failing. If it was not doing this prior to upgrade, I highly doubt it is the problem now. IMO, the PSU is the culprit. They should pick up a quality PSU, tier 1 or tier 2. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html

logainofhades

Titan
Moderator
An old, and unstable, psu can cause many kinds of system issues. It probably wasn't a quality unit to begin with. Having games on an HDD, and OS on SSD, would not be the cause of an issue, unless one of the drives was failing. If it was not doing this prior to upgrade, I highly doubt it is the problem now. IMO, the PSU is the culprit. They should pick up a quality PSU, tier 1 or tier 2. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html
 
Solution
I don't think we have enough information to make a good guess. Get memtest86 to test out the ram (minimum 1 hr no errors). Get a program to check the HDD/SSD for errors (normally manufacturer has them on their site). Go into bios and check your voltages to see what they are (+/- 5%). Report back and we can help more.
 

g-unit1111

Titan
Moderator


Yeah I agree, I think we need more information. Especially having the make and model of the power supply in question will be a huge help. But an 8320E draws 95W, where a regular 8320 draws 125W. And that GT550 shouldn't use much power either. That power supply should run, but again depending on the make, model and age we can't accurately make an assumption about what's going on.