Thoughts on a power supply surge issue post SLI Installation.

TitanLive

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Feb 13, 2016
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Hey all, I am currently experiencing an issue where when playing more graphically demanding games, such as Witcher 3 or Tomb Raider, i get a crash reboot and a screen stating "Power supply surges detected during the previous power on. Asus anti-surge was triggered to protect system from unstable power supply unit." Most other games work just fine with no problems at all, borderlands, rocket league, Fallout 4, even GTA 5 on maxed out settings has no problems at all.

This build is barely a couple of months old and up until a couple weeks ago I was running only a single GPU. I did not start experiencing the crashes until I added the second card. Obviously the SLI is my issue.

My first thought is that my 860w PSU isn't cutting it since adding the SLI, but the build always had the second card in mind and I accounted for 764W before hand. Originally I was going to go with a beefier power supply, but was assured through multiple reliable sources that my particular 860w Corsair ax platinum would be more than enough for the system. Overheating definitely isn't an issue, temps are remaining well within safe ranges. I'd also like to note, i am not conducting any sort of manual overclocking.


All components in the build are as follows:
(I understand the perceived overkill, that isn't why I'm posting here.)

1. SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB SSD

2. OCZ - Trion100 1TB SSD

3. G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (4 x 32GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM 3200

4. Running in SLI 2 X ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme 6GB

5. Intel Core i7-5930K

6. Corsair Hydro Series™ H110i GTX 280mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

7. ASUS X99-DELUXE Mobo

8. CORSAIR AX series AX860 860W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Active PFC ...

9. Microsoft Windows 10 Home - 64-bit - OEM

10. NZXT phantom 820 Case
 

TitanLive

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Feb 13, 2016
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I have not as I'm worried that if I do and there actually is a problem, I could potentially fry a very expensive system. I know I've read that it gets a lot of false reads, and based on the fact that it seems to cut out only under the heaviest of loads after SLI, I'm thinking that the nature of the card being inherently overclocked that at full load I'm drawing more than the 860w I have. If I turn the anti surge off, would I still get a heads up like a system shut down or some sort if I am drawing too much power? Or would I be risking potentially frying my mobo, gpu, or burning out the psu? I'm not sure if I should just turn off anti surge, or invest in a much beefier psu like a 1200 to 1500w to be safe?
 
I don't think the wattage of the PSU makes a jot of difference tbh mate. I have an Asus board that also has that feature and although it runs two cards and folds 24/7 the anti surge doesn't kick in but if I run 3D mark with only one card then it does but not at the same place in the benchmark.
 

PSUGod

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Feb 14, 2016
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If you get a Asus Anti-Surge warning it doesn't mean that the PSU can't deliver enough.

It means that the PSU is unstable or the motherboard is just wrong. Sometimes it's also another component in the PC, that isn't 100% anymore and affects the motherboard stability.
 


My anti surge board is a Crossfire board but I run two Nvidia cards on it as it only gets used for folding. As mentioned above when anti surge is enabled and only one card is used to run a benchmark the anti surge doesn't like it but if both cards are set folding at the same time it doesn't care about the power surge at all, that feature is pants and doesn't work properly IMHO so you're better off just disabling it and moving on.