Is this enough wattage? Power Supply Question.

[Guest]

Hi, I'm wondering if im getting enough voltage for my rig. It would help me if this is one of the problem whereas I have cold boot problems sometimes. I currently have a
COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus RS-500-PCAR-A3-US 500W ATX12V v2.3 Power Supply

Output: +3.3V@22A, +5V@25A, +12V1@18A, +12V@218A, -12V@0.5A, +5Vsb@2.5A

I'm not real good with power supply amps and what not but here's the specs of my rig
and already my video card minimum req. are: Minimum of a 450 Watt power Supply

(Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 24 Amps.)

Specs:
AMD Phenom x4 955 3.2ghz
1x GTS 250 512mb DDR3
2x 1GB Corsair XMS2
1x SATA Hitachi 750GB H/D 7200rpm
1x ASUS CD-/+RW/DVD-/+RW
1x PC-e TrendMicro Ethernet Adapter
1x 200mm Case Fan w/ LED
3x 120mm Case Fan w/ LED
1x Antec 900 Case

My question is it says i need 12v@24 or more amps and the specs of my power supply says it gives off only 12v@18amps. Do I need more juice for my rig?

PS. With the cold boot problems, I boot up after 4+ hours and after my desktop appears I just get a blank black screen with no mouse cursor. Have to hard reset to get it stable, it's stable after 1 reboot it's weird. Planning to add more ram once I recieve my RMA'd 4gb ram back from corsair. Thanks for you help.

 

[rolli59]

Your PSU is big enough and has 30amps for the combined +12volt rail.

 

[hell_storm2004]

Specification-wise the PSU is quite ok. But i have doubts about the Extreme power series. They contain poor quality parts and are known to blow up. If it was the Real Power or the Silent Power series from CM, then it would have not been the problem. Plus, it provides hardly enough efficiency. Just above the 70% which is not good. So changing it would be a better choice.

If you check its review, you wont be impressed. If you are planning on some upgrade on GPU or something later, then get a bigger one now. Or get a Corsair VX550W, that would serve you quite well.

 

[jsc]

hell_storm is right. It is a low quality unit with relatively poor efficiency and without active PFC.

If you treat it like a 350 - 400 watt PSU, you should be OK. With a combined output of 30 amps at 12 volts, it's actually in the same power class as a Corsair 400CX - without the Corsair's quality.