Too low wattage?

[David29]

Hello
I have had my pc from Feburary 2013, and it has worked brilliant until recently. 4 Week ago it started doing crashing to desktop with my game (WoW) vanishing off task bar, then reappearing and loading up again. Thought nothing of it. Then it started freezing. Thinking it needed a clean, I pull the pc apart and dust it. Worked fine up until now. Same thing happening, freezing. Again pulled it apart and cleaned it, even though there was hardly any dust, including PSU. Keeps on hanging when playing any games, but I can leave it on desktop all day no problem. Am also receiving the message gfx driver stopped responding and has been recovered. My spec is as follows

Case AeroCool Qx-2000 Gaming Cube Case
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3470 (3.2GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® P8H77-I: Mini-ITX, LG1155, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM) 16GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 8GB)
Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660 Ti - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 120GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR |
520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 10x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
Power Supply 450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling INTEL SOCKET LGA1155 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS
STANDARD
Modem NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
(£79)

On nvidia's own website they said the min required psu is 450. When buying the pc was told in a pop up that 450W was fine and this included a 20% margin. Should the PSU not be higher? I trusted that 450 was correct as advised but it seems a bit low? Since games are more demanding making the gfx work harder, is it needing more juice than I can give it? Or is the gfx faulty? I have done all the standard stuff with drivers etc to no avail.

 

[mantadog]

Much depends on the other components in your rig, the PCS calculator is pretty accurate so I wouldn't worry. Nvidia just have to guess on the safe side.

 

[Androcles]

Much depends on the other components in your rig, the PCS calculator is pretty accurate so I wouldn't worry. Nvidia just have to guess on the safe side.

Hmn, he has almost the same spec as me except I chose no graphics card as I already had one, when I tried adding a 660 ti a while back in the upgrade page to see if I could put one in it told my I needed a 500w supply, this was about 3 months ago. Maybe they've had problems and changed the requirements since he purchased it, I'd suggest giving them a call to check, he might need a bigger PSU.

 

[mantadog]

Giving it a bit more thought I do remember th3 350-650w 'normal' psu's did stop being selectable with some of the 6xx series cards once PCS found an issue with them not being able to supply enough power to the 12v rail (the one the GPU uses) So I guess it could be possible.

One way to test this would be run a GPu stress test utility. if that works fine then run a GPU and a CPU test utility at the same time. If you only encounter issues running both at once then it is probably the PSU.

Have you monitored temps while gaming? it sound like its 1 of 2 things. The PSU or the card is faulty. The stress test method above should shine a light on it.

 

[David29]

I have rang PCS and followed all the tests provided. They do not think it is the PSU. I assume the model of the PSU would flag something up for them if they had encountered an issue in the past. My gfx card is being RMA'd as it is still under manufactures warranty. Games making the gfx work hard crash it to desktop, including world of warcraft at ultra. However I have been able to play WoW at a low setting without issue. I can't really wait for the month or so the gfx will be away for, so I have spashed out on a GTX 970 which will work with my PSU. If the same thing happens I will assume it is the PSU not supplying enough power.

Many thanks for all your help and I will keep you updated!

Merry Christmas!

 

[mantadog]

ah well we will see, hope it works for you anyway.

merry Christmas.