Snap Snap Snap... – 378 days old

[ZemaTalon]

... goes the powersupply in my gaming machine. 3 or 4 year old Corsair 850W. I've been hearing an occasional faint snap every once in a while but I could never figure out where it was coming from. But last night it was loud, and with 3 quick snaps in a row. I happened to have an ocean sound mp3 playing to help me sleep - it would hiccup with the snaps, easily ID'ing the source. Needless to say I shut it down. So out it comes. I'll have to cannibalize one from another machine since my biggest spare is only 600W and I don't think that'll cut it with my 6970HD.

[ZemaTalon]

On the other hand, after all the work of pulling that thing out of there, and not looking forward to doing it to a second machine, and after just getting home from a long day at work, after losing sleep last night because of this stupid PS waking me up, I'm thinking maybe it can get by fine on 600W for a while

[Alakazam]

Corsair RMA's are great Zema, I hope you get things sorted easy enough.

[MSUredux]

I think you might be surprised at how little your computer draws. I'm pretty sure my system is a bit behind yours but here's what I have going on. It will illustrate what I mean.

CPU= Core2 Duo E8500 3.16Ghz
RAM= 8GB DDR2-800 (PC-6400) (4x2GB)
Hard Drives= WD Velociraptor (1)
WD Caviar Black (2)
WD Caviar Blue (1)
Sound= Soundblaster XFi Extreme Gamer
Video= Radeon HD6770
Power Supply= Antec NeoPower 550W

At idle it draws about 174W. At full bore, 100% CPU and GPU, it draws about 285W. Not even enough to make my 550W PSU break a sweat.

[ZemaTalon]

Thanks Mark, makes me feel a bit better for sure. I got everything back together and up and running again. Reconnecting the sata power connectors was the biggest headache, this ps doesn't have as many, so I had to use an adaptor and omit one drive I didn't really need in there. It has 3 WD Caviar Blacks and an SSD. Think I used up every single molex and sata connector on this ps to hook up all the drives and fans

[Grogan]

Let me guess... you know that because a power supply calculator on the web told you? Bollocks to those... I don't believe those numbers. (I don't mean your 550W Antec can't handle it, I just don't believe the numbers are quite that low. It always seems to be a very generous estimate using those things). You also don't have a high end video card.

Get a good power supply, Zema.

[MSUredux]

No...I have a device that you plug into your outlet, then plug what ever you want to check into that and it measures the draw.

I mentioned that my system was a little behind his.

I never said not to put in a good power supply. I was just trying to illustrate that his 600W PSU was probably more than up to the task.

edit: I just went to one of those online PSU calculator sites. According to it, mine isn't enough. It says I need a 650W PSU. But as I've shown it's plenty.

[Bad Haircut]

My friend has one of those, that's why I've never bought anything other than a quality 600w psu for my 3xhdd non gaming system.Bags of room for reasonable upgrade for what I do / am likely to want to do.

[ZemaTalon]

It's just temporary, the box my 6970 came in listed 550W as the minimum so I figured it could get by on it until I can get a replacement. Like Grogan, I prefer to have a little extra headroom with PS's.

[ZemaTalon]

Hooked it up to my PS tester - it shows strange values and then immediately shuts down, that was weird. The machine was still running ok with it before I shut it down, aside from the audio hiccups caused by the occasional electrical snaps.

[floppybootstomp]

I've been using the same Corsair 620W Modular PSU for 5.5 years now I think, certainly a long time, system used to be based round a 6600 core duo, now powers quad core i7 3.4Ghz with an Nvidia GTX560 card. Tis coping fine.

PS: Snap snap snap is almost certainly large leaky electrolytic or possibly a dry solder joint on something that gets hot.

[ZemaTalon]

Replacement ready to be installed:



This is my first modular PSU. All extra cables came in a separate tote bag.



BTW, I took these with my phone, I was going to experiment with posting them directly to the forum from my phone, but my phone only shows you long cryptic file names without thumbnails, so you don't know which pic is which. So you then go into your pic gallery where you can actually see your pics, but it won't show you the file names. So much for that - I gave up and just emailed them to my regular computer

[Alakazam]

Are you up and running with the new PSU Zema?

[ZemaTalon]

I am The thinner modular cables on this one were a lot easier to route through tight spaces than the old one, and the clutter is sure a lot less without all the extra unused cables