Smokin_Joe
02-17-2008, 09:23 AM
I'm currently awaiting my DFI mobo to complete the build in my sig but last night i installed the BFG 8800GTS OC, the X-FI soundcard and 2 ccfl's(still have 2 more going in) in my AMD Opteron170@2.9GHz, DFI LP NF4 Ultra-D rig. I'm running 2 hdd's, 1X92mm Tornado, 4X80mm Tornado's, 1X140mm Blue Led Fan, 1 NEC DVD drive and the fans are all hooked up to a Sunbeam Rheobus and all this stuff is being run by my old trusty OCZ Powerstream 600w PSU.
Well i ran 3dmark06 to test my rig out and the first run went fine but when i tried to run it again my pc locked up at the 3dmark main screen. So this morning i decided to run the Crysis demo and watch the leds on the back of the psu to see if they were turning yellow or red and sure enough the 3.3v and 12v rails were flickering red. Well then i broke out my multimeter while still running the demo, measured all the rails and they were indeed low. So while still measuring each rail i proceeded to give them more juice while staying within +-5%, testing full load and idle and this fixed my problem. The rails are all in spec.
My concern is will this psu be enough for the X3210 Xeon, DFI LT X38, 4Gb's of ram, OCZ XTC ram cooler and another fan(120mm 100+ CFM Panaflo)? I can probably crank up the rails some more but doesn't that create more heat and put more strain on the psu? I'm already thinking of opening it up and cleaning it out cause i haven't done so in the 2 yrs i have had it + i bought it second hand. Another thing that's bugging me is that this psu doesn't have PFC. I was thinking about getting an OCZ GameXStream 600-700w psu but besides having active PFC i'm not sure if that is even a worthy upgrade. I know the 4X12v rails aren't really going to benefit my single gpu system much and i don't like how OCZ did away with the adjustable rails on the back. Why did they do this anyway? So what do you guys think? Should i invest in a new psu or will this one do a little while longer?
Well i ran 3dmark06 to test my rig out and the first run went fine but when i tried to run it again my pc locked up at the 3dmark main screen. So this morning i decided to run the Crysis demo and watch the leds on the back of the psu to see if they were turning yellow or red and sure enough the 3.3v and 12v rails were flickering red. Well then i broke out my multimeter while still running the demo, measured all the rails and they were indeed low. So while still measuring each rail i proceeded to give them more juice while staying within +-5%, testing full load and idle and this fixed my problem. The rails are all in spec.
My concern is will this psu be enough for the X3210 Xeon, DFI LT X38, 4Gb's of ram, OCZ XTC ram cooler and another fan(120mm 100+ CFM Panaflo)? I can probably crank up the rails some more but doesn't that create more heat and put more strain on the psu? I'm already thinking of opening it up and cleaning it out cause i haven't done so in the 2 yrs i have had it + i bought it second hand. Another thing that's bugging me is that this psu doesn't have PFC. I was thinking about getting an OCZ GameXStream 600-700w psu but besides having active PFC i'm not sure if that is even a worthy upgrade. I know the 4X12v rails aren't really going to benefit my single gpu system much and i don't like how OCZ did away with the adjustable rails on the back. Why did they do this anyway? So what do you guys think? Should i invest in a new psu or will this one do a little while longer?