Woah am I underpowered now?!

[System]

I'm just wondering...

I've been having issues with my desktop lately and been meaning to format it sooner than later (maybe a reality very soon) and the latest now is a sudden shutdown during gameplay. And just last week I was finding my BIOS magically resetting itself to the opposite of what I had before (AKA everything is the lowest value possible and/or it would look for graffics on PCI first vs PCIE).

So ya the only thing I have done to my pc was just last weekend when I put in my third hd, 1TB.

my psu is 700watts, powering:

E6600
4gb pc8500 ram ddr2
8800gtx
74 raptop
300gb maxtor
1000 gb seagate
5.1 creative sound blaster card, fatality edition with the front panel.
1 dvd reader/writer on SATA
1 dvd drive on IDE
9700 zalman
3 x 120 mm case fans
1 x 220 mm (or w/e the massive one is on the antec 900) case fan
and of course laser mouse and illuminated keyboard.

I'm personally thinking maybe I'm low on amps since its only like 18 on the gamexstream 700watt psu??

I just unplugged my TB hd to test if the problem persists during gameplay, will notify once i am done testing that.

If not what you guys think my issue maybe then?

[=98=]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

Two things spring to mind.

1. Your PSU may be suffering a little if the rails aren't powerful enough. It's not sucking 700W, but it may be too weak (or possibly broken) to supply enough amps on the rails.

2. You have quite a lot for your Southbridge to do with all those disks. I know when i added my RAID arrays to my P5Q Deluxe, the stock southbridge voltage was too low and thus i had to manually increase it otherwise my system would crash under load.

I have my Southbridge at 1.3v, but each board will take different voltages. For some, 1.3v is very high, others it is too low. You need to research yourself.

[Death Merchant]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

Two things spring to mind.

1. Your PSU may be suffering a little if the rails aren't powerful enough. It's not sucking 700W, but it may be too weak (or possibly broken) to supply enough amps on the rails.

Just to add to alex's post a little

The power of the rails will usually be shown on a sticker on the side or bottom of the PSU, or if its from a reputable manufacturer check their website

[System]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

700W Connectors**
1 X 20+4-pin ATX
1 X 4+4-pin CPU
1 X 6-pin PCI-E
1 X 6+2-pin PCI-E
6 X Peripheral
2 X Floppy
6 X SATA

[Wizrdwarts]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

680W-155W=525W
525W/12V=43.75 amps

Should be enough for a single 8800GTX and quad core, shouldn't it?

[System]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

I been running this beast for almost a year and now that I added this TB hd I get random shut down while in game so my guess is that I am trying to get too much juice out for something.

Also I forgot that I have two mini fans cooling my ram.

I was also thinking maybe just take out th 1gb of ram seeing as how I only see 2.75as functional.

[Wizrdwarts]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

Do you have a backup graphics card you can test it with? Maybe downclock your CPU?

That should tell if it's a power problem or a problem with the new HD.

[System]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

the only backup gpu i have is AGP radeon/nvidia but either would work my mobo neways. and my cpu wasnt even oc at the time of the shutdowns...

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

sure you've already done it, but have you checked all the molex/sata connections to make sure eveything is plugged in well? components start getting warm, expand, and suddenly your psu picks up spikes and shuts things down (depending on features).

You should have plenty enough power to run all that stuff--make sure (if possible) your gpu is the only thing on that rail.

[System]

Re: Woah am I underpowered now?!

Yea Im going to take apart my pc over the next few days to do a thorough cleaning as well as checking connections but everything seems to be plugged in nice and tight still. The 8800 takes both PCIE rails to be powered.

and now things are worse, my computer will not boot nemore. All that happenes is when I turn it on I'm on a black screen and it shuts down shortly. If I have it disconnected from ne power source it takes longer to shutdown but nothing happenes anyways. the BIOS reader also says "- -" during this brief time.

I been talking to a few people about this and it has been narrowed down to 3 hardware faulties, one of which being the ram that I am willing to say is most likely not the case of the problem.

That leaves the mobo itself and the PSU to look at.

I've noticed that the LED in the psu is very dim when I try turning it on now and now seems like its not even turning on anymore. I will have to check this out in a completely dark room setting to really confirm this incase it is just a case of too much light in the room making the led very dualing looking.

Whats you're guys thoughts?


---edit---

Forgot to mention that I am prolly going to borrow my old gaming rigs psu to try to power up my puter. I doubt it has newhere near enough power to do so with my gpu on the board though, I should be able to see post though without a gpu on the mobo though to determine if its a psu issue right?

Otherwise I need a new mobo, Alex is suggest the p5Q delux from Asus:

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=018814&cid=MB.157

This is a local store for me so it beats going to newegg and ordering there even if its a full 1$ cheaper lol.