Power supply insufficient?

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[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2002
Messages
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This morning when I woke up, I went to my computer and it was behaving very oddly. It was doing everything about as slow as a 500mhz Celeron that is trying to burn a CD while you're using it for normal things. I rebooted thinking some software had gone crazy and was raping my CPU usage, but to no avail. I took a look at CPU-Z and freaked out. Everything was going crazy, HTT, CPU speed and Vcore were all jumping all over the place. I quickly shut down and unplugged the power cable and hit power again to drain the remaining power. Powered back on and same thing. I have a Vantec fan controller that lights up on the front panel with my 120mm Sunon and 3 80mm's on it that I figure draws a bit of power, so I powered back down and unplugged that whole thing (no fans or the lights are drawing power) and undervolted my CPU to 1.35 and backed down to default speeds, so now my Ninja is running passively with the side panel off. The voltage seems to have stabilized somewhat, but still jumps a little bit. At least it's staying between 1.3 and 1.4 and nothing else is jumping around. Before, I saw it dip down to 1.26 and up to 1.54 in the minute or so I watched it before shutting down.

So, do you guys think my Liberty 400w isn't enough, or is something else going on here?
I've had this same build for over a month with no power problems. Specs are in my sig. Thanks.
 
Actually I think there's an issue with your motherboard or the CPU is overheating.

Vcore is regulated by the motherboard and the processor will take liberty (ha ha.. pun) with that voltage if it feels the CPU may be overheating.
 
Speedfan was reading under 40c the whole time. It's actually hotter now that I have the Ninja running passively and I'm not having the problem. On the other hand, last night it got pretty cold and I sleep with my window open because I like it cool when I'm sleeping, so it very well could've gone down below 30c, do you think that might've thrown something out of whack?
 
honestly, power supplies shouldn't be loaded to past 80% of their rating... so if you consider it a 320W instead of a 400W, yeah... I'd say you're overloading your supply.

I'd say a 500W is a minumum for overclocking Athlon64/Opteron systems, and probably a 600W if you're going dual-core. It's always better to have a bit extra room than to have your supply running past 80% capacity.
 
Try another power supply? :D

Or leave your window open again, wait for the temps to drop and try your OC again. ;)

Dumping a tray of ice cubes in the reservoir always works for me. :cool:
 
When the temps dropped is when the problem started in the first place. The OC wasn't causing the problem, going down to default speeds and voltage was the first thing I tried. It didn't smooth out until I unplugged the fan controller and backed down to 1.35v

Jonny you're the guru so I'm wondering if you think I'm overloading the supply? I leave my system on 24/7, only rebooting once or twice a week just to keep things fresh, I'm not sure if that has any effect or not. I would imagine so since the temps will get higher if the machine's on 24/7. If you do think I am overloading, what do you think I can get away with? Will a neoHE 430 be enough? I really don't want to spend more than $100.
 
I'd say it's a motherboard issue. Assuming it's working properly I'd say that Liberty is suitable for your rig, most of it's wattage claims is on the 12v rails.

EDIT: oops
 
Ok. I put it back up to default speeds and voltages with everything plugged in. After I turned it back on, it seemed fine and after about 5 minutes I started playing CS. I played for about an hour, then exited back into Windows. Came back to check replies and it started happening again. 100% CPU usage and completely unusable, had to hit the power button. Now I unplugged the fan controller and just plugged my 120mm straight in. Now it's usuable but still idles at around 40-50% CPU usage. If I go to task manager and look at what's using it, it's just normal stuff that I shouldn't notice at all. If I try even light multitasking, it feels horribly laggy.
 
Seems like the "multitasking" is what's doing it. And by multitasking, I mean having 1 Firefox window open, mIRC and MSN. Heavy duty stuff, I know.
 
Everything seems to work fine at 1.35v. Why would the board be freaking out at 1.4v+?
 
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