Was my power supply holding me Back?

walnojxb · May 9, 2007

I recently had to replace my power supply old one was antec 400w (sp 400) and new one is 500w (modular, model number at home). The old power supply was emitting a high pitched whine during idle and sometimes during gaming. I also questioned some of the fluctuating voltage readings in my bios and everest reports.

Anyway, during some recent overclocking attempts I would push as far as I could go until I would get blue screens, and overheating temps and such. I finally stopped at a comfortable level. (I can elaborate more on this later)

So my question is: Now that I have a new power supply, should I re-attempt overclocking?

Does a Power Supply really have that much to do with overclocking? If so why? Is it the rails, current, watts or what?

I know that someone here can tell my exactly how a power supply affects overclocking with regards to rails, current, and watts, etc.

I just want a better understanding on how important a good power supply is to overclocking?

Thanks for any answers.

Oh yeah; sytem specs are in sig. ( I know it's old, but it's all I got )

Oc1Kenube · May 9, 2007

Im not sure on the specifics but after having my ezcool 600w psu blow up 2 wks ago after months of speculation as to if this could be holding my own oc's back i can cofirm that after replacing it with the corsair in my sig,it has made no difference to my oc's. But i was not experiencing BSOD errors so a new psu may remove those at least, as for the high temps look to cool your chipsets and invest in a good heatsink is my only advice i can offer prior to re'attempting any oc'ing

walnojxb · May 9, 2007

Oc1Kenube said:
Im not sure on the specifics but after having my ezcool 600w psu blow up 2 wks ago after months of speculation as to if this could be holding my own oc's back i can cofirm that after replacing it with the corsair in my sig,it has made no difference to my oc's. But i was not experiencing BSOD errors so a new psu may remove those at least, as for the high temps look to cool your chipsets and invest in a good heatsink is my only advice i can offer prior to re'attempting any oc'ing

You are right. I forgot to mention: I also replaced the stock northbridge fan after it died (common problem on NF7-s2 boards). I put in a coolermaster overclockers fan (model number at home).

So now with a new PSU and chipset fan, I think I will try my oc's again. Wish me luck! :santa:

walnojxb · May 10, 2007

Ok, I got home and tried to oc some more. I went from 200*11 to 200*12.

So far so good. I was able to game for 2 hrs straight, no lockups,BSOD's, or crashes. Normally I wouldn't have lasted more than 5 minutes gaming.

At this point, I believe my Power Supply could have held me back on previous oc attempts, that and possible fan failure on my Northbridge.

SuperDave1685 · May 11, 2007

Oklahoma Wolf, SuperNade, where are you?? Please guide this lost soul from the grips of Antec!!

Does a Power Supply really have that much to do with overclocking? If so why? Is it the rails, current, watts or what?

YES. The quality of a PSU is everything. You could have a 550W PSU, and it could only have 18A on the 12V line... Not good at all. A PSU's quality is also based on the actual design of the unit. Antec has a relatively good design, but uses poor components.. Think of it as tying to build a tall fence to keep people out, but you build it out of Aluminum... doesn't do a lot of good, does it? Most Generic PSU's (Raidmax, Powmax, Deer, etc..) Do not measure their PSU's abilities very effectively and thus largely overstate their specifications.. i.e..I've seen a good, 350W PSU outperform a cheap 480W PSU before. It all has to do with the amps that the unit can provide on all the rails, how efficient it is at putting out the power and how steady is the current it produces. A lot of theses lesser models will cause what they call ripples... aka power fluctuations, when under high stress situations. this can cause a multitude of problems. Most commonly, its BSOD's, random shutdowns, or random reboots.

walnojxb · May 15, 2007

SuperDave1685 said:
Oklahoma Wolf, SuperNade, where are you?? Please guide this lost soul from the grips of Antec!!

YES. The quality of a PSU is everything. You could have a 550W PSU, and it could only have 18A on the 12V line... Not good at all. A PSU's quality is also based on the actual design of the unit. Antec has a relatively good design, but uses poor components.. Think of it as tying to build a tall fence to keep people out, but you build it out of Aluminum... doesn't do a lot of good, does it? Most Generic PSU's (Raidmax, Powmax, Deer, etc..) Do not measure their PSU's abilities very effectively and thus largely overstate their specifications.. i.e..I've seen a good, 350W PSU outperform a cheap 480W PSU before. It all has to do with the amps that the unit can provide on all the rails, how efficient it is at putting out the power and how steady is the current it produces. A lot of theses lesser models will cause what they call ripples... aka power fluctuations, when under high stress situations. this can cause a multitude of problems. Most commonly, its BSOD's, random shutdowns, or random reboots.

Thank you for your input. I will focus more on rails and such on my next psu purchase. My current psu seems to be doing OK, but that could just be luck.

SuperDave1685 · May 15, 2007

As far I can remember, Antec switched to having Seasonic manufacture their OEM units starting the the NeoHE line here recently. You'll have to give us the UL number thats on the back or side of the PSU (its on the sticker listing all the voltages and amps) and we can tell you who made the PSU- Channel Well (crap) or Seasonic. Each manufacturer has their own Underighters Labratory number, so we can tell who made it. You might be ok for a while though, depending on the age of the PSU. Get back to us with the UL number and I'll look it up for ya

-dave

cozee · May 17, 2007

I recently changed my Q-tec 500w for a hyper r 480w and i can get 50mhz more clock speed and my pc mark score went up 56-59 points (after three runs to make sureI didnt think a psu could have this impact even though the cheap q-tec was 500w it must of had bad lines

walnojxb · May 20, 2007

SuperDave1685 said:
As far I can remember, Antec switched to having Seasonic manufacture their OEM units starting the the NeoHE line here recently. You'll have to give us the UL number thats on the back or side of the PSU (its on the sticker listing all the voltages and amps) and we can tell you who made the PSU- Channel Well (crap) or Seasonic. Each manufacturer has their own Underighters Labratory number, so we can tell who made it. You might be ok for a while though, depending on the age of the PSU. Get back to us with the UL number and I'll look it up for ya

-dave

Wow, didn't know this was going on. I will get that info as soon as I can. Thanks

malvindo · May 21, 2007

walnojxb said:
I recently had to replace my power supply old one was antec 400w (sp 400) and new one is 500w (modular, model number at home). The old power supply was emitting a high pitched whine during idle and sometimes during gaming. I also questioned some of the fluctuating voltage readings in my bios and everest reports.

Anyway, during some recent overclocking attempts I would push as far as I could go until I would get blue screens, and overheating temps and such. I finally stopped at a comfortable level. (I can elaborate more on this later)

So my question is: Now that I have a new power supply, should I re-attempt overclocking?

Does a Power Supply really have that much to do with overclocking? If so why? Is it the rails, current, watts or what?

I know that someone here can tell my exactly how a power supply affects overclocking with regards to rails, current, and watts, etc.

I just want a better understanding on how important a good power supply is to overclocking?

Thanks for any answers.

Oh yeah; sytem specs are in sig. ( I know it's old, but it's all I got )

YES, PSU often held overclock

i used Tbred oc to 11 x 200 daily when using GF3 classic
when i change to GF4 Ti 4200, i can't pass more than 2.ghz

using some 350w PSU

2nd, u used to GA-K8NSC-939, my FSB can reach 310 -315 with acbell 400w
when i changed to Lan Party NF3 ultra UT my FSB can't reach more than 250 FSB

change to OCZ powerstream 520w, everything work flawlessly

when using acbell 400w memtest 86 can't go more than 220 @ 2.5-3-3-6
using OCZ powerstream memtest reach 235 @2.5-3-3-6
and reach 265 @ 3-3-3-8

so i am not too concern abt PSU @ the old days,
now, i am

SuperDave1685 : many ppl still brainwashed becos of antec, it takes time to clean the mess :beer:

, time wil do

SuperDave1685 · May 21, 2007

SuperDave1685 : many ppl still brainwashed becos of antec, it takes time to clean the mess , time wil do

Time will do, true. They've started producing their new HE line with Seasonic as the manufacturer, so they should be ok now. its just that a lot of folks still have in their hands the CWT built models which use the crappy Fuhjiyu caps. It will take time for the Seasonic built units to trickle down and replace all the CWT ones too...

malvindo · May 21, 2007

SuperDave1685 said:
Time will do, true. They've started producing their new HE line with Seasonic as the manufacturer, so they should be ok now. its just that a lot of folks still have in their hands the CWT built models which use the crappy Fuhjiyu caps. It will take time for the Seasonic built units to trickle down and replace all the CWT ones too...

yup, blunder to Antec, when they downgrade the quality

make competitor burst to the market,

Was my power supply holding me Back?

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