Is my PSU Big Enough?

C

cooter

Gawd
Joined
Dec 2, 2004
Messages
872
Ok, Some of my friends say that my computer is a bit choppy when gaming in like ut2k4 and some other fps's. I notice it a bit but it does not effect game play at all, i think. Anyway the other day i had to lower my graphics settings in farcry from 1680x1050 at full everything to 2xAA and 8Xaf.

Anyway, that got me thinking, i should not have to lower my settings in that game. I have heard that an underpowered PSU can hinder performance but i am not sure. I did the following PSU calculator and came up with 781 recommended watts, my OCZ is a 520W:

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp#footnote5

Do you guys think i need a bigger PSU or that my current one could be reducing performance and smoothness in games? If i do need a bigger one what to get? I will be adding a TV Tuner card to the mix soon.

Here is the system:

PSU: OCZ Powerstream 520
Mobo: DFI Lanparty UT Ultra D
CPU: AMD 4800+ X2 S939 @ 2600mhz
RAM: OCZ PC4000 @ DDR540
Graphics: ATI X1900XTX @ 690/800
DVDR: NEC 3550A @4551
CDR: Lite-On 52X Burner
HD1: Maxtor 300 GB SATA 16mb cache
HD2: WD 250 GB SATA
HD3: WD 200 GB ATA100
HD4: WD 160 GB ATA100
HD5: Fujitsu 73 GB 15k RPM SCSI
SCSI Controller: Adaptec 39320-R
Waterpump: Swiftech 650 (i think, but it is plugged into the psu)
120 MM Fans: 3 of them
80 MM Fan: 3 of them
Floppy Drive: Mitsumi with the card readers
USB Devices: 4 or 5 USB devices at any given time
 
What OCZ is it? If it is a powerstream, please specify what revision you have. Also, are any of your HDDs RAIDed?
 
I have the OCZ Powerstream 520. I am not sure of revision, i could find it my computer is packed up my my car for the day.
 
IIRC, my mind is telling me that the powerstreams that have a blue LED fan are the new revisions and are much better then the first ones (that have a green LED fan). At least I remember jonnyGURU posting that, which makes it a fact ;)
 
Why must people keep using that shitty calculator? make it stop!!! :(:(


That calculator is inaccurate as hell. Don't trust it.


Your powerstream 520 is more than enough to handle it. Don't believe what the calculator says.
 
Bbq said:
Why must people keep using that shitty calculator? make it stop!!! :(:(


That calculator is inaccurate as hell. Don't trust it.


Your powerstream 520 is more than enough to handle it. Don't believe what the calculator says.
Click to expand...


Is that calculator showing too low or too high?
It says I only need 400watts on my system.
 
i understand that it is not the greatest thing out there but i also am pretty sure i have a bunch of crap hooked up to the computer.

It is showing i need 781 watts and i only have 520 watts.

The big question is would lack of power cause a degredation in porformance?
 
To be honest if you really needed close to 800 watts of power and you're running a 520W power supply...either OCZ is really off the mark in rating their own PSU capabilities, or they have essentially built the Hulk of PSU's. Or maybe even like Bruce Willis' character in that movie Unbreakable, David Dunn. Only one way to find out - piss off your PSU, or hold it around evil people and see what it does.

There is no way your 520W would be able to power your rig with that much of a need. I think that calculator is off by a lot.
 
My modest computer pulls 682w, according to the calculator.

I calculated it manually, properly, and it's not even half of that.
 
Bbq said:
Why must people keep using that shitty calculator? make it stop!!! :(:(


That calculator is inaccurate as hell. Don't trust it.


Your powerstream 520 is more than enough to handle it. Don't believe what the calculator says.
Click to expand...
Learn how to use it, there are bunch of options to figure out the recommended consumption. Of course nothing is perfect, but it is close enough.

There are a few folks on this forum that just simply hate my calculator. If you are so smart, cut the sh#t and make it better. Can you test 600+ CPUs and get the actual power consumption under the load instead of declared TDP? Can you stress out all the components at the same time? I don't think so.
 
dBTelos said:
What OCZ is it? If it is a powerstream, please specify what revision you have. Also, are any of your HDDs RAIDed?
Click to expand...
What the ELL, do these questions have to do with the posters question?

There are no "bad" versions & all have +12V@33A.

RAIDed HDD's consume the same amount of power as non-RAIDed HDD's.


The OCZ PowerStream 520W should be fine. ;)
 
davidhammock200 said:
What the ELL, do these questions have to do with the posters question?

There are no "bad" versions & all have +12V@33A.

RAIDed HDD's consume the same amount of power as non-RAIDed HDD's.


The OCZ PowerStream 520W should be fine. ;)
Click to expand...

1) The first revision of the Powerstream isn't very good, especially when compared to the second.

2) RAIDed HDDs consume more power then non-raided drives because they are constantly writing data back and forth, either stripping or mirroring.
 
It's no so much "the first revision isn't that good" as much as "The first revision is good, the second revision is better."

as for Raid, if you have 2 disks in raid0, both are spinning and writing (or reading) most (all) of the time. Now if you have the same 2 disks not in raid, but spinning and writing or reading all the time, same power consumption.

That, and hard drives don't take a lot of power.
 
Bbq said:
It's no so much "the first revision isn't that good" as much as "The first revision is good, the second revision is better."

as for Raid, if you have 2 disks in raid0, both are spinning and writing (or reading) most (all) of the time. Now if you have the same 2 disks not in raid, but spinning and writing or reading all the time, same power consumption.

That, and hard drives don't take a lot of power.
Click to expand...

Most people don't have HDDs reading and writting all the time...
 
dBTelos said:
1) The first revision of the Powerstream isn't very good, especially when compared to the second.

2) RAIDed HDDs consume more power then non-raided drives because they are constantly writing data back and forth, either stripping or mirroring.
Click to expand...
(1) The "green" version was an EXCELLENT PSU & things just get bettet!

(2) Total BS! SATA drive draw about 3A of +12V & spin all of the time!

Please learn something & stop posting nonsense!

Dave :rolleyes:
 
davidhammock200 said:
(1) The "green" version was an EXCELLENT PSU & things just get bettet!
Click to expand...

Actually, if you can get a hold of someone that works or has worked at OCZ or for a VAR or tier 1 that sold OCZ during the green 520 times, they'll tell you the failure rate on them is very high. Also, that PSU was at it's peak when SLI meant a pair of 6800's and hardly anyone was running 6800's in SLI. The original 520 has known issues with crossloading and poor voltage regulation. In other words: Typical Topower. I don't know if it was OCZ cracking the whip or the "threat" that OCZ was going to take it's business elsewhere (FSP) but the blue LED OCZ520ADJSLI is far, far, far, far superior to the green LED model and pretty much ANYTHING else Topower has ever made including Tagan models.
 
jonnyGURU said:
Actually, if you can get a hold of someone that works or has worked at OCZ or for a VAR or tier 1 that sold OCZ during the green 520 times, they'll tell you the failure rate on them is very high. Also, that PSU was at it's peak when SLI meant a pair of 6800's and hardly anyone was running 6800's in SLI. The original 520 has known issues with crossloading and poor voltage regulation. In other words: Typical Topower. I don't know if it was OCZ cracking the whip or the "threat" that OCZ was going to take it's business elsewhere (FSP) but the blue LED OCZ520ADJSLI is far, far, far, far superior to the green LED model and pretty much ANYTHING else Topower has ever made including Tagan models.
Click to expand...

You always explain things better then I do ;)

(2) Total BS! SATA drive draw about 3A of +12V & spin all of the time!
Click to expand...

SATA drives and IDE drives at spin up will always use a good amount of power, but rarly will you have any drives spinning 100% of the time or something similar, SATA or IDE. The only instance where that is something that is guaranteed to happen is a RAID situation, and if you have 4 or more drives RAIDed, that can make a significant difference in power consumption.
 
About the 3A thing: Look at any drive enclosure, unless it's one touch backup (otb would need more power for it's logic. Essentially a mini *nix running on an eeprom) and you'll find that the power supply is only rated for 2.5A. Typically only 12V if the 5V is regulated within the enclosure.

When spinning up, a hard drive can draw as much as 36W total, but once the heads park and the platters spin down to idle rotation, you're talking about a draw of about 12 to 15W from a hard drive.
 
jonnyGURU said:
About the 3A thing: Look at any drive enclosure, unless it's one touch backup (otb would need more power for it's logic. Essentially a mini *nix running on an eeprom) and you'll find that the power supply is only rated for 2.5A. Typically only 12V if the 5V is regulated within the enclosure.

When spinning up, a hard drive can draw as much as 36W total, but once the heads park and the platters spin down to idle rotation, you're talking about a draw of about 12 to 15W from a hard drive.
Click to expand...

15W times say 3 or 4 (for drives) would change what you may recommend for a PSU, right jonny?
 
Yes and no. When the computer is spinning up the drives initially, the CPU isn't really working and the GPU's aren't really working. So the balance is on the other side of the scale.

I'd say more than four drives, start to rethink the PSU. But I wouldn't think twice about one to four hard drives in the grand scheme of things.
 
jonnyGURU said:
Yes and no. When the computer is spinning up the drives initially, the CPU isn't really working and the GPU's aren't really working. So the balance is on the other side of the scale.

I'd say more than four drives, start to rethink the PSU. But I wouldn't think twice about one to four hard drives in the grand scheme of things.
Click to expand...

But lets say that your in the middle of playing a game on your computer, and you have raid setup. So you have the CPU and GPU working hard on running the game, and the HDDs are working to copy files back and forth for RAID. At spinup you are right, just wondering about other times.
 
Yeah... but the motors still aren't pulling as much juice as they do at startup, and are you really running the drives that much DURING game play? Perhaps between scenes, but not during game play, right?

Seriously... that wasn't a rhetorical question. ;)
 
mnemonik23 said:
Learn how to use it, there are bunch of options to figure out the recommended consumption. Of course nothing is perfect, but it is close enough.

There are a few folks on this forum that just simply hate my calculator. If you are so smart, cut the sh#t and make it better. Can you test 600+ CPUs and get the actual power consumption under the load instead of declared TDP? Can you stress out all the components at the same time? I don't think so.
Click to expand...

I try to take it easy on you because I know you have put a lot of hard work into that calculator.

But I do have to wonder if you went through all of the trouble of measuring the draw of so many components, why didn't you break it down in terms of rails and amperage. How do you measure these different loads? Are you measuring on the AC side and then calculating for efficiency or do you actually clamp the DC leads from the PSU?
 
jonnyGURU said:
Actually, if you can get a hold of someone that works or has worked at OCZ or for a VAR or tier 1 that sold OCZ during the green 520 times, they'll tell you the failure rate on them is very high. Also, that PSU was at it's peak when SLI meant a pair of 6800's and hardly anyone was running 6800's in SLI. The original 520 has known issues with crossloading and poor voltage regulation. In other words: Typical Topower. I don't know if it was OCZ cracking the whip or the "threat" that OCZ was going to take it's business elsewhere (FSP) but the blue LED OCZ520ADJSLI is far, far, far, far superior to the green LED model and pretty much ANYTHING else Topower has ever made including Tagan models.
Click to expand...
We just must have been very lucky, as we used 30+ OCZ PS 420W/470W/520W "greens" with never a problem! :D
 
Amazing.

Then again, there's a guy over at Anandtech that's used dozens of Allied PSU's and have never had a problem too. :eek:
 
jonnyGURU said:
Amazing.

Then again, there's a guy over at Anandtech that's used dozens of Allied PSU's and have never had a problem too. :eek:
Click to expand...
Actually, I've seen the Allied 300W/350W last forever in lowend never upgraded PC's. Their bigger ones tend to die quickly! :D
 
jonnyGURU said:
Amazing.

Then again, there's a guy over at Anandtech that's used dozens of Allied PSU's and have never had a problem too. :eek:
Click to expand...

Who?
 
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