New Found Hardware! Lack of power as result?

qonquista

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Sep 22, 2011
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18,510
Antec 300
Windows 7 Ultimate
Antec 750 earth-watts psu
Asus P7p55dEVO mobo
i7 860 2.8 Ghz Stock
500Gb WD 5000 RPM
2x4 Patriot Gaming2 DDR3 1333 Mhz (dual channel)
Nvidia 550 Ti
Xion 3 dual heatpipe cpu heat sync w/2x90mm fans
4x120mm Antec Tri cool LED
1x140mm Stock fan
2 Super speed plus write master drives

Peripherals include:
Hp Wireless keyboard
Logitech wireless mouse
LG LCD Flatron wide 22 in/ 1680-1050 Res
Dell LED SR2220L 21.5 in/ 1920-1080 Res
Audio-shitty 2 speaker system

Recently I have taken the liberty to make a few additions to my computer mainly the Nvidia 550 ti, the Xion Heat sync w/two 90mm fans, the Patriot DDR3 ram, and two 120mm Antec tri cools. I did not upgrade all of this hardware at once keep in mind but as i have done it piece by piece my computer has had more and more performance issues (which is kind of the opposite of what i was going for) the last hardware i installed was the 2 140mm fans, after booting up even trying to access the internet was a challenge. Being that it was the fans to cause the most significant performance loss i am assuming that it could be a power issue.

My questions are could power be behind all of the performance issues i am experiencing, I have no active OC on my computer right now and all the BIOS settings are stock. Secondly can I increase the power to my hardware without increasing lets say the frequency of my ram. I would like to have exceptional computer performance without having to OC my comp/ however if my only option is OCing then i suppose i could take the time to find stable settings. If I can just increase the power to my hardware without doing a full OC what settings need to be increased specifically, CPU, CPU PLL, dram? And lastly could just increasing the V to all of my components fry them? :/ what are safe settings?





 

lashabane

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Oct 7, 2009
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Your PSU *should* be enough to power all the hardware you have.

A simple test would be to leave the side panel off of your case and unplug all of your fans.

If that solves your issue, start plugging them back in one by one.
 
What type of performance issues are we talking about? Heat? Loading programs? Crashes? poor frame rates? 'not as fast as it use to be'?
This is a fine system, but hardly what could be called a power hog requiring 750W. Unless the PS is just plain bad you should have more than enough power for everything.
An obvious choke point is your 5000RPM drive if you are running your system off of it. They have fine sequential read/write, but random read/write requires a faster spin rate on mechanical drives. I would not say it should make the computer sluggish overall, but definitely slow loading OS and programs.
 

qonquista

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Sep 22, 2011
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I though about unplugging my fans like you said. i will give that a try here in a few hours, but he main performance issues are programs loading slower than they should. Immediately after i installed the two fans earlyier my browser stopped responding three times in a row and then my whole comp locked up. I knew that the weakest part of my comp is my HDD but it was running fater when i had and EVGA 8600Gt and 2gb of mixed ram.
The power supply was given to me from my uncle so i dont even know how old it is, is there a way of testing its output?
 

The fan problem is a coincidence. Two fans will pull not nore than 1/2 amp at 12 volts. If your slow loading problem is not caused by your hard drive, you have something else going on.



That particular Antec model is a pretty good PSU. If you system can boot and run, your PSU is probably OK.

To verify PSU voltages, use a DMM to measure the voltages. Measure between the colored wires and either chassis ground or the black wires. Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire (standby power supply): 5 volts always on. The green wire should also have 5 volts on it. It should go to 0 volts when you press the case power button, then back to 5 volts when you release the case power switch. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.