Power Supply Questions, am I cutting it short?

[Vociferate]

I have been having a fair amount of BSOD's, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what's causing it.

Someone who works in the IT department took a look at my system and stated that my PSU is most definitely causing the crashes.

Everywhere I have read people have been saying that using a 1000w PSU would require a fairly robust system. Most of these systems are using SLi or Crossfire, and seem to be a fair bit more than mine. But again, it's hard for me to say.

This is my current system:


AMD 965 BE OC'ed to 3.8GHz
8 GB RAM
Radeon 5870 GPU

OCZ Vertex II 60GB SSD
300GB Velociraptor HD

Standard peripherals:
2 1TB External HD
Keyboard & Mouse
Belkin n52te

ALL of this is powered off a Corsair 650w PSU.

I am quite certain that I am running at max power on my PSU. It's really the only thing that I can think of causing my crashes.

DB guys & gals, any ideas?

[Elgert]

Could be the PSU - i'm running a similar system with a 750w corsair PSu without any trouble.

In my experience BSOD's are often caused by the RAM. My motherboard auto-setup my RAM as 1033Mhz (i think) with CAS 20-6-6-6 (or something like that), and my screen was blue very often. After changing it to the correct 1666Mhz and the CAS 24-9-9-9 that was printed on the side of the RAM sticks - everything is fine. Same with my last PC - took a long time tweaking the RAM timings before it ran without BSOD's.

Then again - could be anything really

[Vociferate]

How can I find out (and test) my RAM Timings?

I ran the Microsoft RAM Diagnostic for about 9 hours, and the tests claimed that there were no faults.

[alcattle]

How can I find out (and test) my RAM Timings?

I ran the Microsoft RAM Diagnostic for about 9 hours, and the tests claimed that there were no faults.

look for a program called MeMtest 86. It works in DOS and will be sure there are no errors.

[Pycno]

The psu has plenty of power so that is not the problem unless its defective.
BSODs are in my experience often related to memory or CPU issues. The first thing you should do is to run your CPU at its rated speed (dont overclock) and then see if your RAM sticks are in the motherboards QVL, if not see if others have problem with same config you have.
I think this is the solution to your troubles.

[Vociferate]

I was reading around, and found this website amongst Google.

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine




I am still leaning that I do need more power, even if its just an 850w PSU. However, I do plan on upgrading to another 5800 GFX card.

[Pycno]

I was reading around, and found this website amongst Google.

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine




I am still leaning that I do need more power, even if its just an 850w PSU. However, I do plan on upgrading to another 5800 GFX card.

From what Ive read it doesnt seem to be anything wrong with your PSU, seems to me the overclock is unstable. Did you notice any difference running at stock speeds?

[Sajuuk]

That's a weak OC on that 965, crank it!

As far as lower, what load percentage did you set the calculator to?

[Vociferate]

70% Load, since when I am 5 boxing, or using a few other programs I see the load come up a fair bit.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I to find that bsod is ram related most of the time.

I never OC .... in fact I ususaly underclock my ram (2T) by one level (run 800 at 667). Ram speed isnt the bottleneck.

But ya 650 seems kinda week nowadays, best to get to 750 at least.