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Power Supply good enough?

X

Xplaced

n00b
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
41
Hey guys. Here's my system:

i5-2500k (stock at the moment)
Nvidia 650 Ti
1tb Sata 7200RPM hard drive
Normal DVD-RW
1600 Mhz Corsair RAM
ASRock B75M-DGS motherboard

I'm running this power supply: COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus RS500-PCARD3-US 500W ATX12V v2.3 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171031

My PC has randomly restarted 2 times today while gaming. Once while in DayZ, once while in Skyrim. I don't think anything is overheating (all temps look pretty good so far) and I looked in the Event Manager and all I see is this error:
"The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

I'm wondering if my PSU is enough. I'm thinking yes, because it's 500 watts and at most my system should use 410 total from what calculators I've used. However I notice the 12v Rail only says 360 watts.

I'm thinking the 12v rail only powers the GPU, right? (I am probably way wrong here, sorry). The 650 Ti uses 110 watts max, so I'm thinking that should be good. The CPU should use 95 watts max, right? So that's just 205 watts.

Should my PSU be enough for this system? I'm thinking it's overkill if anything, but if not, let me know. The only other thing I can think of is that it's a bottom mounted PSU and the air blows out into a carpeted floor, so I'm wondering if it has enough breathing room. Or is that an intake fan? I'm not sure. :(

I'm definitely not a PSU expert, so let me know if I'm way off here. Thanks guys!

Edit - it just did it again while running in Skyrim. Looks like I can make it happen by playing that. The weird thing is that I ran 3 benchmarks earlier with 3DMark 11 and it worked fine. The only thing I've done today is install the WHQL Nvidia driver in place of the Beta one I had installed. Also I messed with the overclock stuff in the BIOS, but I ended up defaulting everything and just leaving it alone for now until I figure out how to get it working properly. Currently I disabled turbo boost, but I'll re-enable that. I figured it would keep the wattage lower in case the PSU is struggling. But, I'm not so sure that's the issue. Hopefully you guys can clear that up for me so I can troubleshoot other stuff.

Another message I'm seeing in Event Log is: "Audit events have been dropped by the transport. 0" I have no idea what that means.

Things I've changed today before this started happening:
1) Nvidia driver (went from beta version to WHQL version)
2) Tried overclocking, but defaulted everything.
3) Updated MB BIOS from version 1.0 to 1.10. Everything appeared to go normally there, it states it's version 1.10 now.
4) Tinker with Throttlestop some, haven't been starting that up though except to log temps.

If I think of anything else, I'll add it.
 
Last edited:
Last bit of my ThrottleStop log if that's helpful at all:

DATE TIME MULTI C0% CKMOD CHIPM BAT mW TEMP GPU VID POWER
2012-11-18 02:44:59 31.63 23.7 100.0 100.0 0 36 36 1.1509 23.6
2012-11-18 02:44:59 31.35 24.4 100.0 100.0 0 35 36 1.1509 24.4
2012-11-18 02:44:59 32.14 24.1 100.0 100.0 0 36 36 1.1509 24.0
2012-11-18 02:44:59 31.98 23.0 100.0 100.0 0 36 36 1.1509 24.5
2012-11-18 02:44:59 31.75 26.4 100.0 100.0 0 36 36 1.2059 24.6
2012-11-18 02:44:59 31.69 25.0 100.0 100.0 0 36 36 1.1509 25.0
2012-11-18 02:44:59 32.36 23.3 100.0 100.0 0 36 36 1.1759 22.7
2012-11-18 02:45:00 32.32 22.1 100.0 100.0 0 35 36 1.1759 21.5

Sorry it's skewed, I tried to edit it to make it more legible but it didn't work.
 
Pretty much all large power draw components run off the 12v rail. This includes the CPU and GPU, most of the motherboard, hard drive motors, fans, etc.

That said, it should be a good enough power supply, although it didn't review all that well in professional testing.

Run Furmark and P95 at the same time, and see if you can replicate it.
 
Thanks for the info Tsumi. I ran Furmark and Prime95 at the same time without any issues. Max GPU temp was 65C and Max CPU temp was 72C. No reboots, nothing out of the ordinary at all. I ran MSI Afterburner's OSD and it showed the GPU memory at only 22% capacity. I may need to run the resolution up to see if that makes it use more GPU memory. It was pegged at 99% GPU use though.

If that PSU isn't great, I have no issues going to Best Buy now and getting a better one. They have some Corsair system builder versions there. I have no issue with getting something well over what I need either. The way I see it, a truck pulling a load that only stresses the engine 50% is better for the truck over time than pulling a 90% load constantly. So if getting a better PSU is a good idea anyway, let me know. I'd like to overclock (I'll need to make another post about that... having issues when I try that (no shutdowns though!)) so I might need more juice than 500w anyway. I'm not sure.

Are calculators fairly accurate in saying my system needs aroun 410w PSU? Or is that something that I should figure low on and get at least a 600w PSU with more on the 12v rail? I guess the real question is, what's a good 12v rail target voltage for a PSU in this system?

Thanks!
 
OK, I just checked my email and it rebooted. This was after all the tests were finished running for about 5 minutes. Then when it rebooted, it rebooted again when it hit the Windows logon screen. Now it's fine, logged in like nothing was wrong. I may need to post in a more general troubleshooting area. I still had some questions on the PSU however that I'd like to see answered if possible. Thanks guys!
 
One more question - I looked at a Thermaltake 600w PSU at Best Buy, and the 12v rail sections say 23A and 20A. I'm assuming that's 276w + 240w = 516w on the 12v rail(s)? Which should be much more than my system needs anyway (at least 90w more than I've calculated). I may get that just in case I overclock in the future (assuming I can get the reboot issues ironed out...)
 
You'd be better off with the corsairs you were talking about before. The Tt TR2s that Best Buy sells are generally pretty shitty.
 
You might want to try and rule out a memory problem. You can do this by running Memtest86+ or HCI Memtest.
 
Thanks for the info. System seems to be running fine now. Not sure what the issue was, but I reflashed the BIOS and uninstalled/reinstalled some drivers. Since then, it's been good mostly all day. So hopefully that corrected the issue.

Thanks for everyone's help.
 
Yep, the pesky drivers and bios. Half the time problems are due to software, not hardware.
 
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