I haven't been hanging around here for a little while, so I was hoping someone could help me out with some info...
Which 500W power supply should I go with, keeping in mind that quality is my top priority? (I'm looking for at least an 80+ Bronze rating, plus solid protections against voltage surges and all that good stuff)... My budget is sitting right around $150. I used to have a Seasonic 430W unit, but honestly, it totally let me down on me... I'm trying to power a Radeon 7870 OC edition along with an AMD i7-3770K setup
Andrew Peterson2 said:We'll just have to wait and see how things play out... even the top-tier gear fails eventually. You should probably hang onto that other power supply for at least a few days—just enough to figure out if Seasonic is actually the culprit here. If the voltage stays low, then you've got your answer; it means Seasonic's gone unstable on you.
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And honestly, even this GeForce card isn't holding up—it's already blacked out on me twice! Like, the screen just goes totally dark while the fans keep spinning away... right in the middle of a movie! Once it happened while I was looking at a graph, and the second time it was just running on integrated graphics...
So now the Seasonic and the Chiftek are both booting up just fine... I mean, who knows what's going on with this rig? But now, out of nowhere, the Seasonic is acting up again and won't start at all.
I also tried pulling the GPU out and plugging it straight into the motherboard, but still nothing, which makes me think maybe it's a power supply issue since my drives seem totally fine
The Seasonic 430W is definitely the higher-quality unit here, but I actually have an old 500W Chiftec sitting in my storage closet from back in 2010, so I might just grab that and give it a shot instead.
Okay... I am in deep trouble here and seriously need some help! So, I left my computer running to run a disk defrag using Auslogics—which I've been using for ages now. I was specifically defragging my E drive, which is just for downloads and isn't my system drive; it's a 232GB Hitachi, while my main OS drive is a 1TB Toshiba Anyway, I checked the box for "shutdown" and set it to defrag those system files on bootup... well, just for that E drive. I came back to turn the machine on, but all I get is a black screen. There’s absolutely no sound from the motherboard, no Num Lock lights turning on, nothing. I can't even get into the BIOS. I tried unplugging the drives first to see if that helped, but no luck, still the same thing. It doesn't matter what I do. I even tried clearing the CMOS using the jumper and pulled the battery out, but still nothing. My setup is an FM2A88M Extreme4+ board with an A10-6790K processor—it was slightly overclocked, but it ran fine like that for a long time before I messed with the OC settings. My GPU is an AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB and I've got 8GB of RAM (2 x 4GB HyperX) Basically, ever since that auto-shutdown happened, I can't even access the BIOS anymore. Like, wtf?
So, I’ve got this old-school Phillips 190s 5:4 monitor sitting here, and I was trying to hook it up to one of my older desktop rigs, but the VGA input is acting totally possessed, you know? It keeps constantly auto-adjusting and syncing like crazy, plus it’s stuck in some weird DEMO mode where half the screen shows one effect and the other half is just... off, which is super annoying. I took it down to the local repair shop and the guy there thinks the DVI port might actually be fine, so he suggested it would probably be way easier to just grab a $13 DVI cable instead of hunting around for a used monitor elsewhere
Since when has it been acting like that? If the BIOS is flagging something as HW reserved, then that’s pretty much the smoking gun right there, isn't it? It's almost certainly just grabbing memory for the on-board graphics. What's the exact motherboard model you're running?
Robert Rodriguez2 said:Nah, don't even sweat it, the 285 isn't exactly a power hog, and that APU isn't doing much either 😁 you'll probably pull maybe 300W for the whole rig 😁
That sounds awesome, and honestly, my RAM was such a steal $400 😁 plus shipping... since the guy just pulled it straight out of his PC, I know for a fact it actually works The CPU shouldn't really be a bottleneck, though I guess it might be in a few specific games? Honestly, I'm thinking about eventually selling off this motherboard and processor combo to pick up an i5 down the road
Won't it be a little overloaded? I mean, I’m kind of thinking the same thing where it seems fine, but honestly, isn't it better to just double-check everything first?
Quick question for you guys—I'm looking at pairing a Sapphire R9 285 2GB DDR5 with a Seasonic SS430GB... my setup is running an AMD A10-6700K with 8GB of RAM, two hard drives, and just one case fan... do you think that'll actually work?
The CPU pulls about 100W under full load, and the graphics card says it's
Timothy Kim60 said:In those really extreme edge cases, you might run into some kind of bottleneck, but honestly, it probably wouldn't be a huge deal and should pass just fine, especially since it's overclocked. In that PC Gamer test comparing the GTX 960 and the R9 280, they didn't see any massive difference between the various CPUs (Athlon 860, i3, i5, i7...) specifically when playing moderately demanding games like BioShock Infinite or Civilization. Personally, I’d lean toward the 280 because the 660ti has that extra 1.5 + 0.5GB of VRAM, plus that first one (the hd7950) actually holds up even better against it now than it did back in the day.
Wait, that's news to me—what do you mean by 1.5 + 0.5 GB of RAM? How does that even work and why would anyone measure it like that?
They look pretty tempting, though I have no idea if they're actually worth the money (assuming I can even snag them before someone else does).
Whatever happens, I guess I'll end up grabbing an R9 270 or maybe a new GTX 950 if I can't pull the trigger on the 280 or one of these two options above...
crimsonstag84 said:Honestly, making such a huge deal out of power draw with Intel cards is a bit much... it really only applies when you're comparing an R9 390/390 x against something like a GTX 970/980.
R7 265 ~ 120W R9 270 ~ 130W R9 280/R9 380 ~ 180W
Alright, I’m totally going to be a fanboy here and say I'm leaning toward the R9 270, but are you guys seriously telling me the R9 280 would be total overkill for this CPU, or is the bottleneck not actually that bad? If I could track down a decent used R9 280 somewhere, I’d probably just grab it and go.
I also have an offer on a GTX 660ti for $333, but I don't know, it feels a little too old and the seller won't give me any kind of guarantee, you know?
Honestly, that middle option is really tripping me up, 😁 because how do the performance numbers actually stack up between them? They both seem pretty much in the same ballpark, though I have a feeling the GTX 950 should be pulling ahead a bit... And seriously, how much of a difference does having a 128-bit vs. a 256-bit bus actually make? I'm planning on playing at 1050p (since I don't want to go full FHD yet), though right now I'm stuck at 768p... so it won't be 1080p unless I hook it up to the TV I mean, if it can handle 720p, then fine, but if it can't, I might as well aim for at least a GTX 960...
Hey everyone, I think it’s finally time to upgrade my GPU, but I’m totally torn on whether I should pull the trigger on something brand new or just hunt down a solid used deal—honestly, what do you guys think is the smarter move? ? I'm currently running a Seasonic SS-430GB 80+ Bronze PSU, an AMD 6790K quad core overclocked to 4.3GHz, and 8GB of RAM.
Man, I can't believe this, but I've started seeing these crazy vertical lines streaking all over my screen whenever I'm running Windows... I ended up having to swap back to my old graphics card just to get things working again... RIP my main GPU.
darkowl72 said:That usually points to the VRAM on the card just giving up the ghost... Any chance you've still got a warranty?
Nah, man, this thing is used. I actually just swapped out the thermal paste like a month ago... if you check my old threads, you'll see what I'm talking about...
So, I'm dealing with an NVIDIA RTX 3D 7770 1GB GDDR5 card here. After just a little bit of playtime, these weird little square artifacts start popping up on certain parts of the screen, and that specific area just stops refreshing... it either stays pitch black or gets stuck showing whatever texture was there the exact moment the glitch hit. I've attached some screenshots from Grand Theft Auto V below to show you what I mean. It’s happening in DiRT Rally too, though I haven't really tested much else besides a quick session of Just Cause 2, which actually didn't seem to trigger it.
The card comes factory overclocked, but even when I try dropping the memory clock by 50 MHz, nothing changes—though if I crank that down by 100+ MHz, the glitches happen less frequently.
or not at all.
it depends.
nah, sometimes it can get pretty bad and take over the whole screen... hitting alt-tab fixes it for about 3 seconds before it comes back...
honestly, it smells like a memory issue, so my only real move seems to be downclocking it.
I should mention that everything usually runs at a steady 60fps and the settings depend on the game; I've got it tuned to run smoothly, and since I'm running at 1368x768, the resolution looks decent enough...
I'm on Windows 10 x64 Pro using the latest Crimson drivers.