Know your Power Supply!

**Mcstrange** · 01-14-09, 03:53 PM

You were probably getting the dsod in XP it just wasnt staying put - you have to set it to halt on errors otherwise it just skips them.

I missed the water cooling system - with that your probably pushing up past 80% usage.
I think you need a new power supply. I would look at at least 650 watts in a quality supply. Maybe look in the 800 range for future proofing.

**scoot** · 03-09-09, 09:34 PM

yea....I've known people who want all this stuff that takes up quite a bit of power and they get a power supply that doesn't meet their needs and end up frying it and not knowing why it doesn't work. haha even to run sli it's recommended you have an sli ready psu but usually it seems like 700W is good enough unless you're going to use like a few 280 GTX and a couple hdd's and a bunch of fans lol

**Mcstrange** · 03-11-09, 08:06 AM

SLI and Crossfire "rated" PSUs is just another bit of marketing junk and doesnt actually mean anything, there is no certificate or other standard for that rating. I could wrap some copper wires around a hamster wheel and slap an SLI rated sticker on it and sell it for 200 dollars, not that it will run even a single gpu....

**Oxi** · 06-18-09, 10:30 AM

I have long been a fan of Antec and Corsair power supplies, and have used them in alost all of my builds over the past several years. My current gaming machine started out as a Core 2 Duo Q9450 with dual ATI HD4870X2 video cards was powered by a Corsair HX1000W.

When I decided to go ahead and upgrade to a Core i7 last month I sat down and did the calculations on my wattage and realized with everything I have in my machine I was really going to be pushing the limits of my PSU, so I looked around at what other options were out there for high output PSU's.

I found a lot of articles praising a new powersupply that BFG has recently developed and are just now putting out on shelves. BFG has been in the computer part business for many years and is well known for their lifetime warranty on their video cards, but are just now starting to be recognized for power supplies. I've had a few of their PSU's in smaller machines and they "did the job" just fine, but all these reviews made this new BFG EX-1200 shine.

So after searching for almost 3 weeks to find anyon that had this thing in stock I finally lucked out and got one, and i'm here to tell you...THIS THING IS A BEAST!!! I will recommend it to anyone who wants to push their machine as far as they can.

http://www.bfgtech.com/bfgr1200wexpsu.aspx

**yayupp** · 06-19-09, 07:24 PM

I had a problem awhile ago that I believe was due to PSU issues. I have this http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16813127225 Motherboard, and it has a standard 4pin molex connector directly on the board right under the pci slots. From what I gathered, it is used for the SLi cards. Now I'm on my second PSU. When I had my old one in, my compy would just start rebooting randomly and more often and often. Finally, it would just not run. Figured I just burned it out. Bought a new one. And hooked it up exactly how I had it before. It started doing the same thing.

Pulled the power out of the 4pin molex connector on the mobo and been running great since.

I wanted to share this experience to see if there was anyone that could shed some light on it.

**Dragunover** · 02-10-10, 09:48 PM

Enermax, Silverstone, Seasonic, OCZ not listed as best brands? :/

**Checkmate** · 04-08-10, 09:01 AM

Originally Posted by Oxi

I have long been a fan of Antec and Corsair power supplies, and have used them in alost all of my builds over the past several years. My current gaming machine started out as a Core 2 Duo Q9450 with dual ATI HD4870X2 video cards was powered by a Corsair HX1000W.

When I decided to go ahead and upgrade to a Core i7 last month I sat down and did the calculations on my wattage and realized with everything I have in my machine I was really going to be pushing the limits of my PSU, so I looked around at what other options were out there for high output PSU's.

I found a lot of articles praising a new powersupply that BFG has recently developed and are just now putting out on shelves. BFG has been in the computer part business for many years and is well known for their lifetime warranty on their video cards, but are just now starting to be recognized for power supplies. I've had a few of their PSU's in smaller machines and they "did the job" just fine, but all these reviews made this new BFG EX-1200 shine.

So after searching for almost 3 weeks to find anyon that had this thing in stock I finally lucked out and got one, and i'm here to tell you...THIS THING IS A BEAST!!! I will recommend it to anyone who wants to push their machine as far as they can.

http://www.bfgtech.com/bfgr1200wexpsu.aspx

mk so that thing has quad rails, which from reading i seem to gather is..a bad thing? (in most cases?) or at least often done poorly. how does the rails thing work (not in laymans terms, nitty gritty stuff)

**draco7891** · 04-08-10, 12:42 PM

Multiple rails are a bad thing because they can prevent amperage from being used. Only certain leads from the PSU are connected to certain rails, which makes it difficult to distribute the load properly and causes problems if a device needs more amperage than a single rail can provide.

For example, if you have 2 rails of 20A each (for a total PSU capacity of 40A), and a CPU that requires 7A with a video card that requires 30A, you can see that the total load doesn't exceed the capacity of the PSU. However, there are only CPU leads on one of the rails, and leads for the video card on the other. The CPU is only using 7A of the 20A the rail provides, but because of the multiple rail design you can't take the extra 13A capacity and use it over on the video card. It's "trapped" by the PSU design, and so the video card doesn't get the power it needs.

That's why single-rail designs are better, because they allow all devices to pull as much amperage as they need. Then the only concern is total load/capacity.

Draco

**Ruukil** · 04-08-10, 06:37 PM

I want to know if I need a new PSU.

I've got an AMD Phenom II X4(it's an unlocked Athlon II x3) it's essentially a 940 with no L3. I have that, the usual stuff that I don't think makes a big impact on power. But I'm planning on running a NVIDIA 280. Will a 400W PSU cover me?

**Checkmate** · 04-08-10, 10:38 PM

so draco would it not be okay if you just alocated enough to each rail so as to not waste any?

Q: in general a power supply with higher wattage has double or quad rails

so say i have 20A per rail and 4 rails

rail 1: 20A from gpu
rail 2: remaining 10A from gpu + 7A from cpu
rail 3: *edit* 7 fans
rail 4: there for future expansion

Is that how it works?

also does what slot i plug the cables into determine which rail the power is coming from?