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question on stability - could it be psu related?

C

chevelle396

Golden Member
I have an Athlon system that is OC'd, and lately I've been experiencing frequent lockups. I have many case fans, and was wondering if possibly my 300 watt PSU can't handle the Athlon AND all of those fans. What are the symptoms of a power supply that is too weak?
 
It could be your psu.. If it was working fine for some time then all of the sudden this problem showed up.
 
In my opinion that 300 watt should be able to handle it provided it's a quality power supply. I have a friend with a 300 watt Antec who has an overclocked Tbird system with 2 hard drives, 3 optical drives, and 8 case fans and he hasn't had any problems. I suggest you first try setting the clock speed back to default and see if you still get lockups. If you don't then your problem is an unstable cpu and not a weak power supply. Or you could possibly just have some corrupt files causing your problems.
 
seems to be working fine now, kicked the clock speed back to normal, but left the voltage at what it was, in case the PSU was the problem. had it running at 1.33 for a good while with no problems, gonna try that instead of 1.37 i guess. bummer.
 
hmm, just a second ago I had some problems with my D: drive. It gave me a BSOD and said "can't read from drive D:" or something, and after hitting the enter key over and over again, I couldn't get out of the loop. Then when I booted up and scandisk started, the thing locked. The proc is clocked normally at this point. I still think the PSU is not putting out enough power. Here's a list of the components this power supply has to provide for:

Abit KT7A w/T-bird 1.2ghz
TB Santa Cruz
Sony 48x CD-Rom
Lite-On 16x Burner
IBM 7200 RPM 20 Gig
WD 5400 RPM 30 Gig (Drive D: )
2 120 mm fans, 1 92 mm fan, 3 80 mm fans, all connected to a baybus
Blue orb, 60mm on proc.
 
Run Prime95.

If it is giving erros like rounding etc., your computer is messing up math which means it will bomb and crash. Raise Voltage or lower OC speed.

If this checks out fine and it STILL crashes, then it is probably PSU.
 
wasn't the psu, tested that out by buying one, now sold 🙂. Apparently my proc is just not wanting to overclock anymore. Doesn't surprise me too much, it's an AVIA #, which i think are the least overclockable. Ah well, stability is better than a little speed, thx for helping me try though.
 


<< wasn't the psu, tested that out by buying one, now sold 🙂. Apparently my proc is just not wanting to overclock anymore. Doesn't surprise me too much, it's an AVIA #, which i think are the least overclockable. Ah well, stability is better than a little speed, thx for helping me try though. >>



AVIA's can OC pretty good, some beat AXIA's.
 
well, maybe I should try disabling ACPI and assigning IRQ's manually. I've heard this solves stability problems...

EDIT: yea screw acpi, I'm gonna do a clean install tomorrow, and assign my OWN IRQ's
 


<< Anyone buy a better PSU that solved instability problems? If so, what were the symptoms? >>

Yup. I replaced my generic power supply with an Antec PP303X, and I was immediately able to overclock my PIII 500 to 667. Before, it would only go to 620. So, I believe there's some merit to having a better PS.
 
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