Strange Artifacting Problem (90% sure it's psu related)

[Mojo3k70]

Hmm.. where do I begin. Well this morning started out as any other, fired up the box and decided to play a game. All went well untill I decided to play some FEAR mp. About 5-6 min into a round, all lighting/ shadows suddenly vanished and small black and purple particles started to apprear. The game then finally came to a dead hardlock and I feared maybe a fan or 2 stopped spinning. Nope, everything seemed fine.. Vid card temps never above 68c (49c idle) and cpu never above 45c. I then tried some 3d mark... same problem.. however, I also tried some Doom 3 and it played flawlessly(how bizarre).

After an hour or so of reinstalling drivers, reseating the card.. clearing up my case, I was at a standstill, nothing i tried solved the corruption/hardlocks. Nothing was overheating and desktop/ Opengl games ran fine.

I then came to one final conclusion. I read earlier on the forum that a power supply can cause vid card instability when on its last legs. As a last effort, I swapped molex connectors from a dvd rom to the vid card (still on its own cable) and bam! I could now play games without massive artifacts. This lead to to believe it was in fact my psu.

Now, what I don't understand is why Direct x games (even ut) were artifacting yet more demanding games like Doom 3 in open gl ran fine...

The system is still a wee bit tipsy (as I will get the very rare lock every hour or so in a game, but the corruption is gone).

System specs:
Athlon 64 3000+ 754 newcastle
Soltek SL-K8AN2E-GR
1 gb (2x 512) reg Kingmax ddr 400
XFX 6800 GT
SB live
4 drives (2x hd, 2x optical)
Thermaltake PP 560W (The culpret methinks).. yes it is a Tt, but It was a gift when I recieved it.

 

[tsuehpsyde]

*gag* ThermalTake PSU's are garbage. Do yourself, and the rest of your parts a favor, and pick up an Fortron PSU (solid for the $$) or an OCZ (higher grade, but more money). I got an OCZ PowerStream 520 Watt after buying a POS power supply based on wattage and bling and then having intermittent issues, and I'm absolutely in love with the OCZ. I recommend reading this thread, as it was (and still is) my holy grail of PSU reference. I now know what companies to go with and stay away from off the top of my head for the most part, and if I don't, I go here.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=792566

 

[Mojo3k70]

Ah yes, the guide. Don't worry, I know my way around power supplies and i think the only reason I have this current one was the price (free). I would love to pickup a PC P&C but I think my wallett only permits a nice solid Enermax, or Fortron. Another question: My games also started to freeze for a few seconds at a time also.. could the psu cause this also?

 

[tsuehpsyde]

Ah yes, the guide. Don't worry, I know my way around power supplies and i think the only reason I have this current one was the price (free). I would love to pickup a PC P&C but I think my wallett only permits a nice solid Enermax, or Fortron. Another question: My games also started to freeze for a few seconds at a time also.. could the psu cause this also?

I had that problem myself with my other PSU, where it would freeze, then play find for 10-15 seconds, then freeze again for a few more. Granted, I RMA'd my motherboard/CPU at the same time, because I was tired of trouble shooting, as well as my videocard (explained the situation to all parties involved, so I wasn't screwing anyone in the proces) and just bought a new PSU....once the parts came together, it worked. But looking back now almost a year later, I'd easily point at the power supply.

Even if a PSU is free (my case came a free one...got used for maybe a week when I had NO money and was saving for a new one), but I wouldn't risk my parts I paid for on something I diddn't, ya know? Even a dual 18A 12v rail fortron is like $35 IIRC.

 

[Mojo3k70]

Well, I have just returned home with a shiny new Enermax 535W (dual 18a +12v) psu and the results are out of this world. Not only is my system totally stable and artifact-free, my game and benchmark performance has skyrocketed! No more slowdowns in CS:S , BF2 is smooth as silk, Fear just flies and my 3dm 05 score went from 4700 to 5200.

This just goes to show how important a decent psu is. Thermaltake: you have some serious rethinking to do in terms of your psu's.

Thanks again for the reply tsuehpsyde

 

[Trepidati0n]

Well, I have just returned home with a shiny new Enermax 535W (dual 18a +12v) psu and the results are out of this world. Not only is my system totally stable and artifact-free, my game and benchmark performance has skyrocketed! No more slowdowns in CS:S , BF2 is smooth as silk, Fear just flies and my 3dm 05 score went from 4700 to 5200.

This just goes to show how important a decent psu is. Thermaltake: you have some serious rethinking to do in terms of your psu's.

Thanks again for the reply tsuehpsyde

Yep...your machine is only as good as its weakest link. Having a sub-par PSU is like telling a professional footbal player he can only have 1 salad a day for the whole season. He may survive for a while, but eventually something is gonna break.

-tReP