Suspected faulty psu

[lookingforsurf]

So I recently began my journey into overclocking. I have a 955BE in a M4-79XTDEvo and 4G Gskill Ripjaw 1600. I have a Noctua NHU12P-SE2 cooler in Antec 900 Case. The reason I posted in the PSU section will follow shortly. Right now my specs are as follows:

FSB: 243mhz
CPU: 3645mhz
VCore: 1.4125
NB: 2637mhz
NB Volt: 1.2
HT: 2187mhz
GSKill Ripjaw 1600 Ram @ 1620mhz
XFX 6850 @ 875/1145mhz

PSU: Antec Basic 550W (I think that was the name)

I can run prime95 for 2hrs with no problem but temps get up to about 58C (41C at idle), my room temp is 27C@51% humidity. This is not a large overclock, so I was expecting cooler temps from the Noctua.. I can run multiple passes with memtest with no errors. I can run furmark with no artifacts for over an hour. When I play some Bad Company 2, I crash in about 25 minutes. That leads me to believe the PSU is faulty. I did not think this humble system would draw that much wattage. Also, PC Probe reports my Vcore @ 1.45 at idle and it drops to 1.41 at load. CPUZ will show 1.43 at idle and drop to 1.41 at idle. Overdrive always shows 1.41.

In the future I plan to add one more 6850. Should I opt for a 650W or 700-750W? There is about a $30 difference between a 650 and 750 and budget is a huge factor right now. Thanks for your input.

 

[rolli59]

Good price on a 750watt http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371025
I am not sure the problem is your PSU!

 

[hunter315]

To rule the PSU out as an issue run Prime95 and Furmark simulatneously until your temps stabilize, your PSU will be under much greater load than it would be in game(prime and furmark stress things to 100% which no normal software will ever do) and you will be outputting the maximum amount of heat, if it doesnt crash during that then you have determined that it can handle powering the system at fairly high temperature.

If the only time you ever crash is in BC2 it leads me to suspect a software issue more than a hardware issue.

 

[lookingforsurf]

well, 25 minutes and running with both prime and furmark going...Not even any dump files generated when it crashes. Still wondering my the voltage readings are all different. They didn't start doing that until overclocking.

Pretty sure the crashes in BC2 started after overclocking. I suppose I could try reinstalling bc2...

 

[lookingforsurf]

Interestingly enough core 1 stopped updating on prime 95 10 minutes ago....

 

[lookingforsurf]

just running prime core1 works fine, core 3 is now lagging behind by a minute or so but they are all responding

 

[hunter315]

I just noticed something interesting in how you achieved your overclock, you boosted the base clock which is bound to be more problematic than simply increasing the CPU multiplier, reduce the baseclock back to 200MHz and boost your CPU multiplier to 18x, that will give you the same 3.6GHz but should be more stable.

 

[lookingforsurf]

Thanks for all the replies. Only using multipliers still has the sames effect. Core1 lags behind severely, or won't complete a test this morning. Even setting back to stock voltage and multiplier and core1 has a problem. When furmark is not running all cores are ok.