confirm PSU issue?

[jmmyz14]

hi all, i'm new here so please lay easy on me ;-)

i'm in the process of upgrading my old socket 939 rig. i just bought his iceq3 3870 and shoved it in, and when i try to play gears of war or crysis (on higher settings) i get a complete hard reboot. occassionally i can get vista to 'recover' to desktop but this is very rare. less intensive 3d games have no problem, however. i can play dungeon runners, guild wars and WoW without crashing. crysis on lowest settings works fine too.

i have a rosewill (crappy i know) 450 watt psu, and the 3870 says it only needs 450. perhaps this is the issue? i just ordered an ocz gameXstream 700 from newegg, in hopes of solving my 3d issues and preparing for crossfire. it hasnt arrived yet.

i'm about 75% sure it is a power supply issue, but can anyone confirm these are the symptoms of a weak PSU?

 

[Quiksilver]

Yes, it's the PSU. The more you tax the card, the higher the power draw on the PSU. The fact your using a mediocre PSU to begin with points this out. You should be fine with the OCZ model. If you run into anymore problems could you list full system spec's.

 

[jmmyz14]

thanks, thats what i was suspecting. i've had nothing but troubles with this video card upgrade. from one nightmare to another...

for one thing, the ati 3870 has a "hd audio device" passthrough hdmi thingamajiggy baked into the card, which takes up irq 7. when i booted into vista, it kept causing irq conflicts with my IDE controller which was slowing down my cpu to a crawl. after much research i finally realized i had to "disable" this device in device manager, and things seem ok now.

now i've got this weak PSU issue. admittedly its been a long time since ive upgraded.

full system specs:
athlon64 4000+
ati radeon X200 mobo
2GB ocz ddr400 ram
HIS iceq3 3870 512 gddr4
creative x-fi xtreme music pci
WD 80gb ATA133
WD 120gb ATA133
LG DVDRW x 2
antec sonata ATX case
el cheapo 450w PSU
Vista Home Premium 32 bit

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I can run my 3870 on 22a rails

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
I can run my 3870 on 22a rails

Just cause the label says 22A doesn't mean it can actually put out that amount. Mainly depends on the components used for the PSU. Rosewill caters towards the cheap user, so it uses cheap components.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Quiksilver

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
I can run my 3870 on 22a rails

Just cause the label says 22A doesn't mean it can actually put out that amount. Mainly depends on the components used for the PSU. Rosewill caters towards the cheap user, so it uses cheap components.

exactly...