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Results of insufficient power

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  • Power Supplies
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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December 19, 2011 6:31:51 PM

Generally speaking, what do all the relevant voltages mean, and what should one look out for?

More specifically, will the following system run... that is, it's running fine now, although from what I've read, I'm about 200w out from what I should have... is there a risk of something going wrong if I keep running it as is.

Coolermaster IGreen 430W PSU

running:

Vista Home 64
Asus p5n32-e
Core2Duo 6420 @ 2.13Ghz
4 x 1GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 (Crucial & OCZ)
2 x Inno3d 8800gts 320mb (SLI)

1 SATA hdd, and 1 IDE hdd, No optical drives, 3 case fans (2 with LED).
Temperatures are low, and when I look at the Voltage Monitor in the BIOS, all the outputs are where they should be.

Thanks

More about : results insufficient power

a b ) Power supply
December 19, 2011 7:29:19 PM

If you start getting frequent BSODs or your computer won't start, it may be caused by the PSU's degrading over time, and not being able to supply the juice to run the system. PSU's will wear out over time. But as long as everything is running without BSODs, you're good.
December 19, 2011 7:40:48 PM

Generally speaking, all you voltages could be right but have spikes which the "monitoring" part cannot catch. ATX standard sais you cannot have a spike bigger than 10% for 12V and 5% for lower voltages, at any time. So if you do have any spikes larger than this, you could have any strange symptoms. My best bet is RAM failiures (BSOD) and freezes while playing (GPU "under"powered). So for this, there is nothing you can do (I mean monitor), as it also depend of AC spikes.

Regarding total power usage, I never exceeded 250-280W with E8400(3GHZ) + 8800GT (just 1) or now with i5-2500+5850. So I estimate you may be at 80% load, with spikes at 90% while gaming. If you see no symptoms of going bad, it should be ok. While all those online forms use maximum from each device, you will never get to 80% of that, as you cannot get full power from CPU while also full power on GPU. 100% in task manager does not mean 100% CPU power.

Oh... and those 250-280W are AC, so with a 90% PSU efficiency (which I don't have) would be around 225-250W.
December 19, 2011 7:53:06 PM

There you have it... the answer I needed in just over an hour. Fantastic.

PSU is getting a bit old, was having more BSOD and stuttering freezes etc than I'd like. Rather than spend money on a new PSU (just yet) I chipped out for two new fans, fiddled with the DIMMs and got rid of dust etc... seems to have sorted it.

Thank you again for your replies. I now know.
!