I recently bought a 560 ti and after making this thread: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/338436-33-bought-expecting-much also upgraded to a q6600 CPU (which, when I am actually in windows and playing works brilliantly).
So that makes my current specs (to see my power needs):
q6600 @ 2.8ghz (from 2.4)
560 ti @ 860mhz (from 822)
2x7200 hdd (1 sata, 1 ide)
6gb DDR2 RAM (2x2gb, 2x1gb)
PCI soundcard
a few system fans
and all that is powered by my 550W mushkin PSU (~2 yrs old).
My symptoms are:
1) When the computer goes to sleep and I resume it, (whether by usb or by power button) everything seems to resume fine except for the video card. All the fans spin up (including ones on the video card) and it gives me a little status is good beep but I get no video. Only way to get video is to hit the restart button and hope I get back into windows... see symptom # 2.
2) About 3/4 of the time when I power up the machine I get 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps and I get no video again. Looking at: http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm I see under the AWARD Bios (I have these -- Abit ip35-e) my beep code seems to mean: "Indicates a video error has occurred and the BIOS cannot initialize the video screen to display any additional information".
3) My overclocks seem pretty weak to me and they will seem stable but then fail when playing bf3. Example: I started my q6600 (g0 stepping) adventure straight off the bat at 3.0ghz because I have an aftermarket cooler and sure enough with the right voltage it booted into windows and I was able to run prime95 for a solid hour at ~55C before I declared it stable. Now at 3.0ghz, when I load bf3 I will get to the end of the "loading" screen, right before you join the game... and the OS will crash (no BSOD, just blank, black screen).
EDIT: Also maybe I should mention that speedfan reads my +12V as 6.76V (I've heard software can be unreliable, and besides... would windows even boot that low?) but in the actual BIOS it reads like 11.79V.
TLDR: Basically, is my PSU underpowered? Could it be the reason for these problems?
So that makes my current specs (to see my power needs):
q6600 @ 2.8ghz (from 2.4)
560 ti @ 860mhz (from 822)
2x7200 hdd (1 sata, 1 ide)
6gb DDR2 RAM (2x2gb, 2x1gb)
PCI soundcard
a few system fans
and all that is powered by my 550W mushkin PSU (~2 yrs old).
My symptoms are:
1) When the computer goes to sleep and I resume it, (whether by usb or by power button) everything seems to resume fine except for the video card. All the fans spin up (including ones on the video card) and it gives me a little status is good beep but I get no video. Only way to get video is to hit the restart button and hope I get back into windows... see symptom # 2.
2) About 3/4 of the time when I power up the machine I get 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps and I get no video again. Looking at: http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm I see under the AWARD Bios (I have these -- Abit ip35-e) my beep code seems to mean: "Indicates a video error has occurred and the BIOS cannot initialize the video screen to display any additional information".
3) My overclocks seem pretty weak to me and they will seem stable but then fail when playing bf3. Example: I started my q6600 (g0 stepping) adventure straight off the bat at 3.0ghz because I have an aftermarket cooler and sure enough with the right voltage it booted into windows and I was able to run prime95 for a solid hour at ~55C before I declared it stable. Now at 3.0ghz, when I load bf3 I will get to the end of the "loading" screen, right before you join the game... and the OS will crash (no BSOD, just blank, black screen).
EDIT: Also maybe I should mention that speedfan reads my +12V as 6.76V (I've heard software can be unreliable, and besides... would windows even boot that low?) but in the actual BIOS it reads like 11.79V.
TLDR: Basically, is my PSU underpowered? Could it be the reason for these problems?