Poor and unstable overclocks and the possible cause.

[dmaownsyou]

The title says it all, I have above average cooling, good airflow, and system runs at low temps. I have experience in overclocking (previously had a wc p4 2.4 clocked at 3.5), but for some reason I cannot get my new rig, as listed below to have any decent sort of overclock in either the cpu, or video card (seperately). I am 63.5% sure the culprit is the power supply an ultra xconnect 500w(i read all the bad things about it on these forums AFTER i had bought it =/). Although I have suspicions becaue the motherboard is refurbished (it is a newegg refurb though, so prolly just openbox). Anyway here is specs:
a64 winchester 3200+
Msi k8n nforce 3 250
1 Gig Corsair xms 3200
XFX Geforce 6800gt
Ultra xconnect 500w

If you think it is the powersupply please recommend a good powersupply, thanks in advance.

[MaMMa]

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=792566

For PSU, Everything else looks good. Have you tried memtest?

[spine]

i'd blame the connection between the cpu and the waterblock.

One thing that happened to me when changing to a new mobo, was that the mounting holes in the mobo were slightly moved meaning the central pressure point was NOT directly over the cpu chip, but slightly off centre. I compensated this by carefully adjust the springs for my waterblock to bias the off centredness. A bit of an art, but I got it working well eventually.


IMHO it's not the PSU. People tend to be quick to blame it because on face value it seems the most likely. But I can tell you from experience I've NEVER solved an unstability/overclock issue with a psu upgrade. Never. 500w is MORE than enough by a long shot. Trust me. I recently replaced the 12amp fuse in my antec 480w psu with a 5amp one, a whadya know? still runs fine, meaning it's not drawing even close ot it's max power output. Athlon XP at 2.05 volts here with 5 hard drives, 2 cd roms, overvolted radaeon 9800pro at 2.1 volts.

So yeah, I reckon you'll be dissappointed if you buy an expensive new psu.

[dmaownsyou]

Actually I went to air cooling after atfirst suspecting bad contact between watberblock and cpu (had to ghetto rig just to get it seat correctly). The heatsink is firmly on there and artic silver is correctly applied. The reason I think it is the psupply is because its not just the cpu getting bad oc's, its the gpu aswell. I have heard that the ultras have pretty unstable voltages on certain rails, not sure how this affects overclocks, but i assume it can't be good. I'll probably buy a mid range psupply like an antec trupower to test (having an extra psu is never bad anyway). Thanks for replies