Is my PSU meeting the demand?

[farina]

I've got an older system, and I recently upgraded my video card and CPU. The video card is now the Asus ENGTX560 (Nvidia GTX 560 Ti), up from a GTX 460SE. The CPU is now a Core 2 Duo E8600, up from a Core 2 Duo E6400.

Ever since, I've experienced random game crashes, and odd render effects. For example, World of Warcraft completely freezes after 5-10 minutes consistently, while Left for Dead 2 renders the hordes of zombies as black/white only.

Last night was my first long exposure gaming night with the new hardware. I was able to get L4D2 and Portal to play just fine for a period of 30-50 minutes. While WoW was working fine for the first 30 minutes, it started crashing every 2-7 minutes there after. None of the crashes caused the computer to reboot, just an application crash back to the desktop.

Thus, I'm wondering...is my PSU powerful enough? I have this [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16817812004]. It's an older Mushkin PSU which is 580W with 4 +12V3@20A rails. Now I know that this card requires a min of 38A on the +12V rail, but this power supply has a thing they called Rail Fusion which supposedly delivers 38A when needed.

Also, I've read that there are an abundance of issues surrounding the current drivers for the GTX 560 Ti. Could that be my problem instead?

I'd really like someone who understands the power requirements to examine my hardware and decide if I should get a bigger PSU before I spend the money buying one for no reason.

Here is my full machine breakdown:

Mobo | Asus P5Q Pro Turbo
CPU | C2D E8600
VID | Asus ENGTX560
MEM | 8GB Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5
HD | 2 Raptor WD740GD 74GB (Raid 0)
1 WD 7200RPM 1Tb drive
PSU | Mushkin Enhanced 550250 580W

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

 

[fffblackmage]

Whether a PSU has a single rail or multi-rail design is pretty irrelevant. Refer to the sticky in this subforum if you want to know more.

You don't need a bigger PSU. ~500W should be more than enough for your rig.
Since you're not getting a total system crash, just the game app crashing, that really sounds like a software rather than a hardware issue.

You could try reinstalling the driver or even try using an older driver.

btw, are you doing any overclocking?

 

[farina]

Ironically Nvidia just put new drivers out. I'll test them when I get home. My only thought was that it might be the PSU as the Video card was running fine under the E6400. When I upgraded to the E8600 I started to experience the issue.

I was wondering if the same 65W chip actually consumed more power when running faster?

Thanks again!

 

[dma0991]

Not possible for a CPU with the same TDP to be consuming more power without actually overclocking whatsoever. The only reason why it runs faster is because of a smaller manufacturing process from 65nm to 45nm resulting in lower TDP and raised clock speed to increase performance.