OCZ Powerstream 520W not enough to power my system? I need PSU guru advice!

[jivetrky]

OK....Here's the back story:

originally built:
4400+
2x1GB ballistix
DFI Expert
SLI evga 7800 GTX KO's
Raptor 150
WD SE16 400GB
Plextor PX716-SA SATA DVDrw
OCZ Powerstream 520W
X-fi EM
Water cooled with Laing D5 pump
4x SilenX 120mmx38mm fans


It would ocassionally have issues with "freezing" whereas the screen would just stop where it was...it wouldn't go blank, the system wouldn't restart, I didn't get a BSOD...it just froze. and I'd have to hit reset. It would only happen once or twice a week and I attirbuted it to my overclock or something.

Welp...I was having issues with the Expert MB...so I RMAed it....in the mean time I found that my Ballistix had gone bad (very common for these 2x1GB sticks)...so I RMAed them and replaced them with G.Skill HZ's
Also I wanted to kill 2 birds with one stone and upgrade to a CPU that would OC better and would make me a little extra money.
So I sold the 4400+ and got an Opteron 165
I also sold the 4 SilenX fans and replaced them with 3 Scythe S-Flex SFF12F's
Also the Motherboard is a different board from before. (same model, just a physically different board)
Oh and also I did the eVGA stepup thing and traded the 7800KO's for 2 7900GTX's

So I've got a mostly new system from what I had before.


But I got the RAM today and hooked it all up....and at 1.8Ghs for the CPU (stock) and DDR400 for the ram (below stock) I booted up and did the CPUz thing and then installed 3DMark and PCMark. I wanted to run 3DMark06 to give me a baseline before any overclocks....at the CPU test..it froze....I thought maybe there was an issue with the RAM timings...so i went and fiddled with those a bit.....came back to windows and within 5-10 minutes it freezes.....this goes on several more times.

SO I was lost.... I thought it would likely be the PSU...so I took my old Coolermaster 430W from my old machine and used it to run:

3 Case fans
Waterpump
Harddrive
6PIN PCIe Connector for one vid card (the other was removed prior to trying the pSU stuff in the hopes it would fix it...it didn't)

The motherboard was powered by the Powerstream...and it has a single 7900 in it and the Xfi card. (all three power plugins on the MB are hooked up)

Welp, running like this...I haven't froze in over 2 hours. SO it seems to me that means te PSU is either bad or can't power this system.

Do you guys think the PSU is bad and needs RMA OR that it just isn't powerful enough to run this system:

Opteron 165 3.0Ghz 1.55 (running that for the last hour - typing this on it now)
DFI Expert
G.Skill 2x1GB Cpuz says 250Mhz...but in BIOS I have a 5/6 divider so it should be at 278Mhz
SLI 7900 GTX's 690/1750
WD Raptor 150
WD SE16 400GB
Plextor PX716-SA SATA DVDRW
3x Scythe S-Flex SFF12F's @ 12v
X-Fi Extreme Music
Waterloop pushed by D5 pump (curently at #4 setting)
Sunbeam CCFL convertor with 2 12" CCFls
usually a Smartcard reader in Serial Port (Powered by PS/2)
USB keyboard
USB Mouse (receiver Powered by USB, not externally)
USB game pad thing (Flexiglow Cyber Snipa)
USB Dell A920 AllinOne pinter/Scanner
USB Flash Hub on Dell 2405FPW
Ocassioanally a USB Flash drive


is all that too much for this PSU? I did the Extreme calcualtor dealey at http://www.extreme.outervision.com/

And included all this stuff I just listed and did a 25% capacitor aging and it said I needed 1044W !!

I really need some advice here...should I look into getting another PSU? Or RMAing this one? If I get a different one it needs to be around the price of this one...cause I don't have money to spend right now :(

Please help! :)

[DeepScience]

Put just the 520 back in. Get a digital multimeter. Measure the rail voltages off a molex at idle and at load (3D gaming). Tell me what you get.

[jivetrky]

I did that....but I will do it again to recheck.....I'll report back in a little while

[jivetrky]

Put just the 520 back in. Get a digital multimeter. Measure the rail voltages off a molex at idle and at load (3D gaming). Tell me what you get.

Ok just ran through 3DMark06 and had the DMM on the 12v line and it was steady at 12.05 the whole time .....2 times (once during each CPU test) it quivered to 12.04 for just a breif second and went right back to 12.05
Seems solid to me

OK....I now have a feeling that this whole time I MIGHT have been screwing myself...I made a realization (of course this was after the Terrific Score of 10104 in 3DMark06 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=303720) )

When I rehooked the OCZ PSU all by itself...I wired it differently than I have before. Previously I had the 2 hard drives on the single SATA wire with the 2 connectors. and not the "hard drive" molex connectors. I did this just so i wouldn't have to use an adapter for the Power....and I also had all three case fans hooked to the MB headers.

I'm thinking this could have been my problem? Cause It just zipped through 3DMark06 andI've been at the desktop for a little while...and it hasn't frozen yet.


What do you think? Was I my own problem?
Oh...right now I also do not have the second hard drive (the SE16) and the DVD drive hooked up to power or SATA ....I will power down and hook them up and run 3DMark again. (I'll also up my OC a tiny bit to see if I can make second place over Krag on the 3DMark06 top10 :) )

[DeepScience]

And the 5V line stable too?

[jivetrky]

Just finished playing around and finally ran 3DMark again monitoring the 5v line....it was 5.16 the whole time...never a waiver.

And I did a little bit better with a score of 10164 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=303782)


I guess I'll run over the next few days and hope I never see another freeze again.

I appreciate the help and wish I wasn't a bonehead for the last 4 months. :)

[jivetrky]

I turned the computer on today and plugged in the DMM and it's reading the 12v line at 12.03 stable....is that normal that it dropped .02 from last night? could that be differences in temperature and stuff like that?

Also this isn't a really great DMM...kinda cheap...could that possibly have anything to do with the difference?

But anyway the PC is still running great.

[thegreek]

I doubt the PSU is causing the problems, could be something else. Check your memory.

[jivetrky]

This mem is brand new...and checks out fine with memtest....but it was doing this with my old memory too. I am pretty sure that I just had my PSU wired wrong. I had the 2 HD's running off the single wire with the 2 SATA power connectors. Not using the 2 specific Hard drive wires. And also I had all three case fans on the motherboard headers.

I THINK this was my problem...cause I wired it up the right way (and powered the fans througha molex ...and so far since I did that the systems has been perfectly stable.

I guess I'll just see how things go like this....and hope that was my problem.

[CGR]

DMM's usually have a +-% variance. So what you see most likely is less than actually is. My 520sli is usually well over 12 on the 12 and a little over 5 on the 5 solid.

Try hooking up both drives to the same line you had before with the two sata power plugs. See if you can reproduce the problem.

[jivetrky]

good call...I think I'll do that a little later....right now I'm gonna go mow the lawn! :(

[AtomicMonkey]

I had similar problem with my setup. I have 4 HHD's, DVD and 2 7800 GT's hanging off the PSU and while stock it was running fine, o/c ing moderately high would cause random hang-ups just as you describe, just ranomly stops dead frozen. Just a matter of time. I fiddeld with settings, mem timings, measured voltages and all seemed well. It's a 2R PSU so I checked the specs and mobo + SATA turned out on the same 18A rail. For ****s and giggles I hooked another 300W PSU and put all drives + fan on that one. Never had a hang up since.