BOOM! goes the power supply. Was I short on Whats, or watt?

**Veovis** · 12-01-07, 06:29 PM

I built my rig about a year ago. I used an Antec Sonata II case, which came with a 450W PSU. The other hardware being driven by the PSU was C2D 6400, X1900XTX, and one HDD and one DVD-R. I figured the 450W was sufficient.

Earlier tonight I was about 2 hours into a COD4 session when my screen went blank and my tower went BOOM! It was loud. PC would not power back on, so I assumed and hoped that the damage was limited to my PSU. That seems to be the case, as I am now up and running again on an Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU that I picked up from the local Circuit City (the only PSU they carried). My intent was to return this PSU after ordering a better one from Newegg, probably at a better price. But this one actually got decent reviews online, and I didn't pay too much for it from Circuit City. Apparently it's also "80 PLUS," whatever the hell that means.

So...

Why did my first PSU go boom?

Will this new one be sufficient? Also considering upgrading to Q6600 and 8800GT soon, so take that into account. Is there any software I can run to check power consumption? I've never really known whether or not any of my machines were under or overpowered... just sort of always guessed. Maybe I should figure out how to be more analytical about it. One thing I noticed is that the PSU I just bought happens to be the same exact one that comes with the sequel to my case, the Antec Sonata III. So that would make me think maybe I'm ok with this PSU... though it kinda sucks that my whole case AND PSU cost $90 a year ago, and now I'm paying $100 for a new PSU.

I am really glad my mobo didn't get damaged too. At least, I don't think it did... haven't put any heavy load on it yet but temps look normal. I was pretty pissed to find out that I can't take my old PSU out (or put the new one in) without removing the mobo though.

Shitty case design. So until I know for sure that this is the PSU I will keep... for now I am running ghetto style.

**Blue_Thunder27** · 12-01-07, 06:31 PM

A 500 watt power supply is plently for a 8800 GT and a quad core. 8800 GT's are one of the most power efficient high end GPUs.

**MotoZ** · 12-01-07, 08:31 PM

Veo,

450W was plenty of power. You had a bad unit.

My rig is running on 450W and it has dual Intel Xeon CPUs (not single dual-core CPU, rather dual old school heater CPUs), a SCSI HDD, an IDE HDD, two DVDs, 3GB RAM, an X1950PRO, and a motherboard the size of a large pizza box with more chips than a bag of Lay's.

**~~Cecil900~~** · 12-01-07, 08:50 PM

So you have two cpu sockets

**roadhog0** · 12-02-07, 10:12 AM

Dual CPU sockets are available for both AMD and Intel and a are OK buy but more expensive then having one Quad Core.

**SapiensErus** · 12-02-07, 04:13 PM

Ah, but he is talking old-skool dual CPU sockets. When he had his two CPU sockets dual cores and quad cores did not exist.

the new thing for amd is the DSDC (Dual socket direct connect; FX-1207 or something like that) which is two chips, usually dual core but with the advent of the phenom probably looking at up to 8 cores total. Intel has something similar and you can have Dual Quad cores...so again, up to 8 cores.