CrossfireX 290s, an 850 Watt PSU and a Puddle of Tears

[Asleep75]

I think I have my answer, but I would greatly appreciate any of your learned opinions. I also cross posted this in the PSU forum, I wasn't sure which was best.

Summary: I have a setup where I have two 290s in Crossfire. Sometimes the system runs stable. Other times, like last night, games crash within minutes. Each card seems to run fine by itself. I have an 850 watt power supply, but it isn’t a great one. Do you believe PSU could cause the stability issues?

Details: I haven’t had a gaming computer in some years now. Recently a friend gave me 2 Radeon 5830 cards. Over the course of three months, those “free” cards lead me down the path to buying:
New power supply (Thermaltake - SMART Series 850-Watt ATX Power Supply)
New Motherboard (M5A99FX PRO R2.0 – Asus)
New CPU (8350)
New Case
New SSD (because I didn’t understand UEFI partitioning, and didn’t want to lose files)
New RAM (Ripjaws X - 1866)
3 new monitors (eyefinity, wow)
And a R9 290 (I was drinking when I bought the second).

I also added Arctic III coolers to the 290s.

Basically, I have been solving a lot of issues. Around Thanksgiving, one of the 290s completely died. I RMAed it. Since then I have been paranoid about temps and I have been fanatical about monitoring them. The GPU doesn’t get over 58c and the VRM maxes out at 62c at full load while playing games.

Nothing is over clocked.

During the two weeks I was without the second card, after multiple rebuilds and hardware swaps I finally got my machine stable (I can now install Windows 7 with my eyes closed). My last problem seemed to be a bad stick of RAM.

Once I got the second card in and Crossfired, I had a few crashes here and there, but everything seemed ok. It should be noted however, I only played a few games and only for an hour or so. This is over the course of a week (Tomb Raider, Dirt 3, Assassins Creed Black Flack and BF4).

The computer is left on 24 /7, though I find reasons to reboot every couple of days.

Last night, Black Flag crashed (video stopped, sound continued, had to hold in the power button). Before I retried I pulled up GPUz and discovered no second GPU. CCC confirmed. Shut down, then restarted. Card was found, Crossfire was disabled. Restarted Crossfire. Loaded afterburner and GPUz to monitor temps. Black Flag crashed again in two minutes. This time the computer wouldn’t reboot until I switched off the power at the PSU. Running again, I tried Tomb Raider to eliminate Black Flag as a problem. Ran the Bench Mark and it crashed before it was finished. Again, I had trouble rebooting. Tried a two or three more time logging the cards.

Went through the GPUz logs. I didn’t see anything odd (temps were way down), though I’m not sure about all the voltage sensors.

Removed one card, and then the other. Tried switching PCI slots. One at a time the cards seem to run fine. I’ll try more testing tonight, but after about 45 minutes of tests per card (games and Kombuster) each individual card presented no problems. Before I went to bed I ran Prime95, this morning, there were no issues.

When I bought the PSU it was for my old MB/CPU combo and one Radeon 8350 card. I didn’t plan on running 2 290s.

I went to a PSU “estimator” site and it recommended 759 watts and a minimum of 719. My PSU is crossfire certified and rated for 850 watts. Despite that, the PSU is the only thing I can think of left to try.

Any thoughts? I don’t want to drop a couple hundred dollars on a new PSU and have the problem persist. I freaking broke after this.

Thanks for your time, I really appreciate any help.
Dave

 

[ATMINSIDE]

It could be the PSU, but I doubt it. Normally when a PSU doesn't want to work you'll be playing a game and the computer will just stop running without warning.

Have you been monitoring motherboard/cpu temps?

 

[Asleep75]

It could be the PSU, but I doubt it. Normally when a PSU doesn't want to work you'll be playing a game and the computer will just stop running without warning.

Have you been monitoring motherboard/cpu temps?

Thank you, I appreciate it. It has just crashed too I don't know why I include a discription of the first crash last night.

As for the MB / CPU temps. No, I haven't. But I will when I get home from work. When I ran Prime95 all night I thought that would heat it up. Also, last night's crashes were happening before even the GPU was getting hot. But I'll look at anything!

Thanks a lot ATMINSIDE

 

[EarthDog]

All stock, that PSU should be fine. Id look into swapping around drivers before a PSU.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

My bet is that you're having issues with the heat from your 8-core getting the socket/vrm of the motherboard too hot when the added heat of the 2x 290s is tossed in.

Use HWMonitor to monitor everything at once, keep it running and loop Unigine Heaven a few times.

 

[Asleep75]

Fantastic advice. I'm thinking about sneaking out of work early to see if that's the case!

Thank you!

 

[Mandrake4565]

Is anything overclocked? If you're running stock settings as ED said it should be fine. Though if running overclocked it may be drawing too much power. Maybe get a Kill O Watt meter to get an Idea of how much power you're drawing from the wall.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Is anything overclocked? If you're running stock settings as ED said it should be fine. Though if running overclocked it may be drawing too much power. Maybe get a Kill O Watt meter to get an Idea of how much power you're drawing from the wall.

First post lists that nothing is OC'd

 

[MetalRacer]

I think you need a bigger PSU. My Enermax Platimax 1350w struggles sometimes when benching two 290x's.

Here is Guru3D's power supply recommendation:
•AMD R9-290 - On your average system the card requires you to have a 550~600 Watt power supply unit.
•AMD R9-290 Crossfire - On your average system the cards require you to have a 800 Watt power supply unit at a minimum.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_radeon_r9_290_directcuii_oc_review,9.html

 

[xsuperbgx]

Are your crashes to a black screen. If so, it almost sounds similar to all of the 290x problems being reported. Are the GPUs at stock or over clocked?

 

[ATMINSIDE]

I think you need a bigger PSU. My Enermax Platimax 1350w struggles sometimes when benching two 290x's.

Here is Guru3D's power supply recommendation:
•AMD R9-290 - On your average system the card requires you to have a 550~600 Watt power supply unit.
•AMD R9-290 Crossfire - On your average system the cards require you to have a 800 Watt power supply unit at a minimum.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_radeon_r9_290_directcuii_oc_review,9.html

Adding up TDP, he's at 500W for the GPUs and 125W for the CPU. That leaves 225W for the mobo, RAM, HDDs, etc.

Should be plenty.

 

[Asleep75]

Thanks everyone!

No, nothing is overclocked.

As for the standerd r9 crashes, I experienced my fair share share of those. A clean windows install, newest drivers and flashing the cards to the latest BIOS fixed that... at least for the cards one at a time.

I forgot to mention, 2 nights ago my computer locked up while watching a YouTube video full screen. First time that happened, everything else happened in games.

I'm hoping ATMINSIDE is correct. I have a new CPU cooler to replace the stock AMD cooler that I have not put on yet, maybe that will help reduce heat from that area.

My main concern about the PSU is that maybe it's crap? I don't know. It was one of the cheaper 850 watt ones out there. I only bought it because it was the only one I could find locally (I really wanted to get my PC running THAT DAY). On paper it should be plenty.

Seriously though, I really am thankful for all of you taking the time to try and help me.

Dave

 

[Mandrake4565]

Asleep try getting a Kill O watt meter and see what you're drawing from the wall. Those Fx 8350's use a lot of power I'd be surprised if the 125 watt TDP at stock settings is accurate.

 

[Asleep75]

Thanks Mandrake... I should have thought of that. I have one.... somewhere

 

[Mandrake4565]

Thanks Mandrake... I should have thought of that. I have one.... somewhere

You'll be surprised on how much wattage these 8350's use. I had my Kill O watt hooked up when I was benching over 5.2 with my GTX 580 and I was in shock on how much I was drawing. I tested using Prime 95 and Heaven at the same time to see what the max would be and I was pulling 827 w from the wall.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Well you do have to include the fact that the number pulled from the wall is after the efficiency lost due to the AC to DC conversation inside the psu. But it's still a good idea to check just to see if you're too close to the limit or over it completely.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Well you do have to include the fact that the number pulled from the wall is after the efficiency lost due to the AC to DC conversation inside the psu. But it's still a good idea to check just to see if you're too close to the limit or over it completely.

Thanks Chance, forgot to mention it's not a 100% accurate number and you need to take into account the PSU efficiency but it will give a rough estimate.

 

[BugFreak]

Unless I'm mistaken my 290 said to run crossfire it needed a 1k watt psu. I'm trying to find my manual to make sure though.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Unless I'm mistaken my 290 said to run crossfire it needed a 1k watt psu. I'm trying to find my manual to make sure though.

That's the manufacturer recommended so that even cheap POS power supplies will suffice. A quality PSU doesn't need to be anywhere near 1kW to run any crossfire setup unless its 2x 7990s.

 

[EarthDog]

Spot on ^^.

A quality 750w PSU will power 2 290s and Intel processor with everything overclocked. The 290 is a 275w card in stock form at WORST (think furmark worst). There isn't a tremendous amount of headroom, but will power through that setup, plenty of fans and HDDs.