Is my old Corsair HX-620 sorry for my new setup? From 920 to 3930K + 670s. Power outg

C

crewxp

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 27, 2009
Messages
393
Do you think it's time for my Corsair HX-620 to be upgraded?

I'm going from this:
Code: 
Rampage II Extreme
Intel i7-920
12GB Ram
2x 4870 
4x 2TB Hard Drives
1x 80GB SSD
4x Cathodes
8x 120mm Fans
1x MCP655 Pump and Watercooling Setup

To This:
Code: 
Rampage IV Extreme
Intel i7-3930K
32GB Ram
2x GTX 670 OC
4x 2TB Hard Drives
2x 256GB SSD
4x Cathodes
8x 120mm Fans
1x MCP655 Pump and Watercooling Setup

I THINK it's just my apartment, but I have constantly power outages just for my specific bedroom. I have to unplug one random USB port in my computer for my computer to start back up after I have flipped the breaker.

If my power supply isn't good enough any more, would you recommend me a better one?
 
It depends on how far you want to push that CPU, with a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge you'll be fine.. with a 3930K you'll most likely have issues.... those power outages are pretty suspicious, what else do you have on that circuit and what breaker do you have on it?.. that USB thing shouldn't happen.. it sounds like some protection is triggered.... under what type of loads do you get such behavior?
 
Yeah, the power thing is strange. It only happened when I moved to my new place though. I don't have anything yet to measure the load of my room, but will look into it.

My motherboard's ROG light flashes off and on when it happens. If I unplug a USB port that is powered, it lights up steady and I can plug the USB back in.

So you think the 3930k will stress my current psu? Any recommendations on how high a wattage to go?
 
crewxp said:
My motherboard's ROG light flashes off and on when it happens. If I unplug a USB port that is powered, it lights up steady and I can plug the USB back in.
Click to expand...
That points towards a PSU issue and/or motherboard issues... so as long as you have some load on the 5vSB rail, you're unable to reboot your system... clearly some protection gets triggered, hard to tell what though, we'd need some proper voltage readings and some actual load numbers.
crewxp said:
So you think the 3930k will stress my current psu? Any recommendations on how high a wattage to go?
Click to expand...
Well, a higher end 650W will do, but again... you might wanna' go with a Sandy/Ivy platform, since the 3930K will do nothing for you if this is a gaming rig.
 
Last edited:
this rig is mainly supposed to be an upgrade for me. i do a lot of animation where I work and it takes a lot of memory. I would like to work from home on projects instead of doing everything at work.

I also produce music for fun, the samples take Terrabytes of space and I would like my CPU to be able to render the music faster and without hiccups compared to my 920

Any specific brands of psu recommendations?
 
With rendering in mind a 3930 makes sense.

You want to go on a case by case basis when buying a PSU, going by brand is the worst approach to such a purchase... since there are major quality, performance and value differences within the PSU lineup of virtually every brand out there.

If you're in the US, this makes an excellent deal right now.
 
I would say the 620 is fine, except how much power does that pump pull? Not familiar with water cooling. The CPU and graphics cards, hard drives etc might top out around 500W with a moderate OC. If you want to be really safe you could upgrade to a Corsair AX850/Seasonic X-860.
 
If you want to be able to upgrade in the future with your new rig I would get a 750w for a much larger ability to upgrade in the future. Otherwise a rock solid 650w wouldn't cost you much.
 
I think that PSU is flat out anemic for the listed parts. I would say 750W minimum for 670 SLI + overclocking. 850 if you don't want to prematurely wear out the capacitors in your PSU.

Your breaker is flipping because the current going across it is exceeding its rating. That can mean several things. Most likely is that you have too much stuff on that single circuit. Even a 1200W PSU can only pull about 10 amps at 120v. Most breakers are 15-25A, so yeah... the idea that your 620W psu is causing the breaker problem is pure insanity.

My bet? You have an A/C(or some other high current device) on your same circuit, and whenever the compressor flips on, your breaker triggers.

A larger PSU will NOT solve your problem with the breaker. I can tell you that much with absolute certainty.
 
Profumo said:
That is incorrect.
Click to expand...
Sorry. There's no way that anyone can be incorrect about what they, themselves, would say.

It's simple numbers.
GTX 670's 170Wx2 = 340W
3930K overclocked = ~150W
sata hdd's 7-15Wx4 = 28-60W

That right there already exceeds 80% of his current PSU's capacity, which will cause premature capacitor wearout. He has several other devices, so he's probably closer to 90% capacity.

An 850W psu would allow him to use up to 680W(80%) continuously without wearing out the capacitors early.
 
Zoson said:
Sorry. There's no way that anyone can be incorrect about what they, themselves, would say.

It's simple numbers.
GTX 670's 170Wx2 = 340W
3930K overclocked = ~150W
sata hdd's 7-15Wx4 = 28-60W

That right there already exceeds 80% of his current PSU's capacity, which will cause premature capacitor wearout. He has several other devices, so he's probably closer to 90% capacity.

An 850W psu would allow him to use up to 680W(80%) continuously without wearing out the capacitors early.
Click to expand...

It's incorrect because of this:

1'st Caps don't wear out like straight razors :).. especially quality caps which lose very little capacitance, and it takes a lot of time for that to happen.. also, load per se does not wear capacitors, caps degrade because of heat, ambient heat and that has a lot more to do with AC-DC conversion efficiency and cooling efficiency then with load(as a relative value in relation to the unit's rating), and self generated heat(this comes mostly from ripple filtering and again it's directly related to the quality and design of the PSU and not the load as a percentage of the PSU's rating.

2'nd Because the load values you listed are peak load values, not continuous load values, those are rare occurrences and not typical loads... they are also incorrect, a 3930 can comfortably pull double that. ;).. either way, a premium/high end 650W is the minimum I'd suggest for such a system... but an 850W PSU is simply unnecessary and a waste of money. ;)
 
If anything I would suggest going with a 80+ platinum series psu, around 750-850w, one that has favorable reviews.
 
I found my sli gtx 560ti cards and my 4.0 ghz i7-920 to be psu limited when it came to max overclock with a 600 watt ocz mod xtreme pro.
 
Archaea said:
I found my sli gtx 560ti cards and my 4.0 ghz i7-920 to be psu limited when it came to max overclock with a 600 watt ocz mod xtreme pro.
Click to expand...
That's mostly because the MXS Pro 600 is in fact an overrated 500W unit, and an average one at best... but also because of the pig Nehalem. ;)
 
Profumo said:
It's incorrect because of this:

1'st Caps don't wear out like straight razors :).. especially quality caps which lose very little capacitance, and it takes a lot of time for that to happen.. also, load per se does not wear capacitors, caps degrade because of heat, ambient heat and that has a lot more to do with AC-DC conversion efficiency and cooling efficiency then with load(as a relative value in relation to the unit's rating), and self generated heat(this comes mostly from ripple filtering and again it's directly related to the quality and design of the PSU and not the load as a percentage of the PSU's rating.
Click to expand...
Except efficiency drops as load increases, and PSU's are hot places.
Rubycon themselves states that their capacitors should have a maximum life expectancy of 15 years at 10C. And for every 10C rise, the life expectancy of the capacitor decreases by HALF:
http://www.rubycon.co.jp/en/products/alumi/pdf/Life.pdf

So, when you consider the 35-45C running temperatures of PSU's these days... Their life is below 3 years if you load the system.

Profumo said:
2'nd Because the load values you listed are peak load values, not continuous load values, those are rare occurrences and not typical loads... they are also incorrect, a 3930 can comfortably pull double that. ;).. either way, a premium/high end 650W is the minimum I'd suggest for such a system... but an 850W PSU is simply unnecessary and a waste of money. ;)
Click to expand...
On your logic he should run with a 200W psu! Yeah! Because only at full load will he exceed that! :rolleyes:
No. And stating that the 3930 will pull ~300W only hurts your argument further. :confused:
 
wow, lots of good info. Thanks guys.

My breaker only trips when my computer times out and turns my monitors in low-power mode. When I move my mouse or press my keyboard, my monitors try to turn on for a split second and then all power in the room goes out. After flipping the breaker, strangely eveything powers on okay besides my computer.

that psu really does seem nice for $100 off. I've never heard of COUGAR, I'm guessing since you linked it, it's a good deal..? lol
 
If your PSU is around 5yrs old, replace it. Power supplies DON'T last forever. The fan will likely be the first to go, when it does you will be SOL.

My HX620 fan died just shy of 5yrs and was a pain to debug. Fans in the early HX series are known to have issues.

I replaced my HX620 with a excessive AX850 PSU.
 
The HX620 is also a beast of a PSU. Love mine, has been rock solid for years.

People are so used to the marketing crap and cheap PSUs that make it so you need a 800 gigawatt PSU for a tiny setup. If you actually look at the draw on a system it will take a TON of shit to add up to those 800-1000w numbers these days...especially as things keep getting more efficient.
 
crewxp said:
that psu really does seem nice for $100 off. I've never heard of COUGAR, I'm guessing since you linked it, it's a good deal..? lol
Click to expand...

Indeed it is, Cougar is the retail brand of HEC, which is one or the larger power supply OEMs, their high end offerings(the GX 700 being one of them) are very solid, but generally poorly priced... but every now and then such discounts are available which make them very good purchases, this being the case with the GX700
 
crewxp said:
My breaker only trips when my computer times out and turns my monitors in low-power mode. When I move my mouse or press my keyboard, my monitors try to turn on for a split second and then all power in the room goes out. After flipping the breaker, strangely eveything powers on okay besides my computer.
Click to expand...

As Zoson said, your breaker issues have nothing whatsoever to do with the PSU, but you MUST figure it out and resolve it. That the breaker is going off at all is really bad news. Code is to not go over 80% load on a circuit to prevent fire hazard.

Assuming you're in a 120 volt area, 15 amp circuits have a max of 1800W and should be kept under 1440W, while 20 amp circuits have a max of 2400W and should be kept under 1920W.

Putting a 20 amp breaker on a 15 amp line is a great way to solve the problem... if you like wall fires.

A 620W PSU and two monitors should not be going anywhere near 1800W. You've got something else significant on the circuit. If you can't find it, the circuit is not necessarily restricted to one room; check the adjacent rooms. If you know what it is, move it onto another circuit.
 
You've both made some really informative posts, but I hate to see what started out as a great thread get derailed by an argument like this that's turned into border-line personal attacks.
 
At the end of the day, Yes, your current PSU will infact power your rig reliably. It doesn't have much headroom and an upgrade to a higher efficency PSU would be a great upgrade, but it should work.

Your electrical problems are another story. What kind of monitors do you have?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top