Is my PSU man enough?

[Cunning Stunts]

Hi All

I have a 120w dc PSU powering my htpc consisting of:

C2D E3200
Zotac itx wifi motherboard with a nvidia 9300 onboard
4gb ram

I had a 2.5" hdd running xbmcbuntu & noticed frequent instability - it would log me out of my session, or drop out of whatever i was doing back to the home screen.

I took the hdd drive out and ran it just off of a flash drive & similar behaviour over various nix os's

All this box is being used for is icefilms/1channel - wouldn't have thought it would be too demanding

The cpu's TDP is 65w, but couldn't find a similar comparison for the onboard 9300, however i suspect its taking it up close to the rated wattage of the PSU

Is that too much for 120w?

 

[velis]

Admittedly I'm using a 400W supply, but my i2100 (also rated 65W) together with 4x3.5" disks and an additional LAN card takes ~35W from the wall.
As long as your PSU provides enough juice per 3,5 and 12V rail, it should be more than enough.
Your instability is probably caused by something else, especially when we're talking instability as you describe it. That isn't even a HW failure, it's the SW that decides it should logoff or go to home screen.

 

[Cunning Stunts]

Well the PSU came with in a case (fairly cheap job) £32 (~$50)

http://www.ebuyer.com/509022-extra-value-case-black-q6-e-q6eby

With the PSU rated as below:
+3.3v @ 8.0A
+5.0V VSB @ 1.6A
+5.00V @ 8.0A
+12.00V @ 4.0A
Total Output Wattage of 122.4W

It seems strange it happened over various *nix distros, admittedly all debian based, unless its some strange bug in XBMC with my particular hardware.

I might just have to go for an i3/itx, but don't fancy the expense right before xmas or just buy a rasberry pi!

 

[TemjinGold]

You know it's an over-specced PSU when you have to add all of that to get the rated wattage...

 

[nwo]

Well the PSU came with in a case (fairly cheap job) £32 (~$50)

http://www.ebuyer.com/509022-extra-value-case-black-q6-e-q6eby

With the PSU rated as below:
+3.3v @ 8.0A
+5.0V VSB @ 1.6A
+5.00V @ 8.0A
+12.00V @ 4.0A
Total Output Wattage of 122.4W

It seems strange it happened over various *nix distros, admittedly all debian based, unless its some strange bug in XBMC with my particular hardware.

I might just have to go for an i3/itx, but don't fancy the expense right before xmas or just buy a rasberry pi!

Holy crap, I have never seen such low amperage on the 12v rail

If you are using onboard graphics, I don't think you have to worry about the 12v rail though.

 

[Cunning Stunts]

Holy crap, I have never seen such low amperage on the 12v rail

If you are using onboard graphics, I don't think you have to worry about the 12v rail though.

Motherboard is this:

http://www.zotacusa.com/zotac-geforce-9300-itx-gf9300-k-e.html

so discrete, but onboard - bought back in the day when intel GMA was the best you could get! Hardly a high powered gpu tho, but cant find it on any psu calculator

Tho reading around, it seems my actual power brick may be underrated for the capacity - i'll have to check when i get home

Edit: Ok....power brick is only 5A @ 12v, so that might be where the instability is coming from - if i thought 120w might be pushing it, 60w certainly is!

 

[_Rick_]

48W on 12V for a 65W rated CPU is also cutting it close.
You might want to make sure your CPU does not exceed 30W. Drop the volts and multi a bit, see if that helps with stability.

Alternatively, I'd definitely try to get a PSU with at least 8A on 12V.

the E3200 shouldn't hit more than 50W even under load, but seeing that it's specced for 65, you never know. If the system goes down under full load, I would expect that it's the 12V dropping and UVP kicking in, or OCP kicking in.