Is my underpowered PSU to blame?

[solidbarton]

See, when I first started having issues, I did all of that. I used three different drivers, fresh driver sweeper + fresh installations, two WHQL and one beta, all crashed BF3. I recently ran Kombuster for 32mins on the old PSU with no errors. I haven't tried that and Prime 95 at the same time though. I haven't updated to the newest WHQL ones, but it seemed for a while that every time they released drivers, they promised stability yet it would be worse than the prior ones. I'm in the middle of building another rig atm, (typing with thermal paste on fingertips O.O) but when I get to a stopping point, I'll swap out and try your recommendations.

[Original Sin]

There's not much you can do about poor drivers, except maybe get an AMD card?.. they seem to have fewer issues with BF3.

[solidbarton]

Lol, I just got the card last Christmas and it runs BF3 almost maxed out. Just the random crashes annoy me lol. And what are you implying about my cooler? It's not enough?

[Original Sin]

Originally Posted by solidbarton

Lol, I just got the card last Christmas and it runs BF3 almost maxed out. Just the random crashes annoy me lol. And what are you implying about my cooler? It's not enough?

Since it suits your overclocking needs it is enough (by that standard, of course), however it hints on the actual power draw of your CPU, meaning it wouldn't be able to keep cool & running a 180W Deneb.

[solidbarton]

Ok, swapped out and put in my old Antec. Ran Kombustor burn in and blended Prime 95 tests for 35 mins, no crashes. So I guess from here, I'll uninstall/driver sweeper/clean install the newest WHQL drivers and see what happens.

[solidbarton]

Got everything up and running. Prolly don't have time to play any BF3 tonight, but tomorrow daytime, so I will keep you appraised. Thanks again for all of your help so far!

[Original Sin]

Originally Posted by solidbarton

Ok, swapped out and put in my old Antec. Ran Kombustor burn in and blended Prime 95 tests for 35 mins, no crashes. So I guess from here, I'll uninstall/driver sweeper/clean install the newest WHQL drivers and see what happens.

That was fast, keep up updated.

Originally Posted by solidbarton

Got everything up and running. Prolly don't have time to play any BF3 tonight, but tomorrow daytime, so I will keep you appraised. Thanks again for all of your help so far!

You're very welcome!

[solidbarton]

So. Played BF3 on both PSUs now, and it's crashed on both. I'm beginning to think its not a PSU issue now, lol. So I guess for the sake of this thread, I may have reached an end, since it's more than likely not a power supply issue.

I'm honestly not entirely sure where to go from here. These recent crashes have been on the newest drivers from NV. Maybe BF3 doesn't like my second monitor? Hmm. Anywho, thank you very much for all of your time and assistance.

[Original Sin]

Driver rollback?.. see what you get.

[cypherpunks]

Your system will pull over 300 but under 400W under load. That's PSU output; it might break 400W at the wall plug due to PSU inefficiency. (Extrapolated from this video card review using generous fudge factors to allow for AMD's processors running hotter.)

So there's no way that the PSU is being outright overloaded. And although Antec has a somewhat checkered quality history, I think they all have basic overload protection, which shuts down the PSU.

That said, there still could be PSU issues. Ripple and transient stability are the big factors that it's hard to evaluate without an oscilloscope.

But this has nothing to do with going from a 650W PSU to an 850W one. The recently reviewed Seasonic 660XP would be even better. But heck, a Corsair CX430 would probably do fine. (Corsair agrees with me.)

It's possible that caps have degraded with time (standard electrolytic capacitors have a liquid electrolyte inside that slowly evaporates at high temperatures; the details are one of the big quality differences between brands), or that the PSU was only so-so to begin with.

The fact that people look only at the big number is a huge problem for manufacturers. People think that, for the same price, the higher-wattage PSU is obviously better, and often it's obviously *worse*. Because the manufacturer spent their parts budget on quantity rather than quality of output.

I don't know about your particular situation; without an oscilloscope connected to your system it's awfully hard to tell. But I can say certainly that your old PSU is not at all underpowered, and is in fact slightly overpowered for what you were asking of it.