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Is this PSU bad or something else?

D

Demon10000

Supreme [H]ardness
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Aug 20, 2006
Messages
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A friend of mine bought a new PC a few months ago. It's an i7 rig with a GTX295 in it. It's got some half assed unbranded PSU that the company he bought it from slapped a label over the real label so we don't know who actually makes it. I really think the PSU is bad, but we're having problems convincing the company to replace it. He's at the point that he's going to just drop some coin and buy a new OCZ PSU and put it in, but I thought I'd fire off the sypmtoms and see if anyone can help him ease his mind about purchasing a new PSU after just shelling out $2k for this new machine.

The symptoms are:

1. The sound card makes weird sound. I'm not sure of the model, but I know it's a Creative. When his computer cold boots, sometimes the sound is all screechy and staticy. I don't know that this is related to the PSU, but it is something he is experiencing.

2. When the computer is under load, he can "hear" it through the speakers. It makes a quite sound. At the same time, there is a blue light in the PSU that shuts off. This is *ONLY* under load!

3. He's got an i7 rig with a GTX295 and is getting the same or worse FPS than what he gets on his Core2 rig with an 8800GT.

We've done memtest, we've updated all the drivers -- all the usual stuff. What really gets me is that light in the PSU that flickers ONLY when the rig is under load. Anyone ever seen that?? It doesn't dim -- it shuts off!
 
None of those sound like a PSU issue. The first two sound like a sound card issue. As for the third, a PSU doesn't have a direct effect on the performance of the system, just the stability and reliability of the PC.
 
The PSU fan light going off doesn't sound like a PSU issue?

In regards to performance, I found this blurb on NVidia's site:
External power - If your graphics card requires an external power source, verify that the cable from your PC's power supply is running into your graphics card. When the graphics card is not receiving enough power, it reverts to lower clock speeds to prevent your PC from locking up.
Click to expand...

I thought maybe if the power was flakey and if it was flakey enough to effect the Video, it may cause problems with the audio....
 
Post a picture of the psu and maybe we can identify it.

I agree with Danny, It doesn't seem like a PSU issue.
 
If your friend is planning on replacing the unbranded PSU, I would advise him to steer clear of the OCZ. There are better units out there. If you list the complete system specs, we can recommend a better PSU.
 
Demon10000 said:
The PSU fan light going off doesn't sound like a PSU issue?

In regards to performance, I found this blurb on NVidia's site:


I thought maybe if the power was flakey and if it was flakey enough to effect the Video, it may cause problems with the audio....
Click to expand...

The PSU fan light is probably just an indication that it is under load. Since we don't know the PSU, we can't say whether or not that PSU fan light going off is an issue.

As for that blurb, the video card doesn't downclock that much, if at all, for it to use significantly less power. Most of the time when there's insufficient power, you get hard locks, reboots, occasional corruption, etc. Not lower performance in games.
 
Sounds more like a bad MB.
I had a sound card with lots of scratching and clicking. However, when I used it in a new system, it sounded fine.
On the same motherboard, I had problems with the computer locking up when I scrolled text too quickly(games weren't a problem). Wasn't the VC, as it worked fine in another MB as well.
That MB just had a bad bus.

As for the light, that's hard to say. I'd need to know what the lights are even supposed to mean in the first place.
 
The sound card could be a lot of things, none of them related to the PSU. I have a lot of problems with my GPUs causing small interferences with the sound card, especially when hooking headphones up through the front panel. This might also be the noise you're hearing when the PC is under load. If there is an nforce motherboard, they also have known compatibility problems with creative cards.

As for the graphics cards, you should download one of the various monitoring programs and make sure they stay at correct clocks during games. Insufficient power is much more likely to cause freezing than slow FPS though. Check out the drivers.
 
This is not a PSU problem with the sound. It is all your audio card. The problem with the light that goes out under load is the PSU is straining to provide the power necessary to keep the motherboard and all accessories powered. The light goes out because the computer is using all available power coming from the PSU, therefore the light has no power to shine.
 
Gman41 said:
This is not a PSU problem with the sound. It is all your audio card. The problem with the light that goes out under load is the PSU is straining to provide the power necessary to keep the motherboard and all accessories powered. The light goes out because the computer is using all available power coming from the PSU, therefore the light has no power to shine.
Click to expand...


??? hahaha
 
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