limiting psu??

[fuiop2000]

hey,

i have a psu that says pentium 4 on it. on the +12v rail it says 16a

would this limit me alot with overclocking an amd with it?

i have a venice 3200+ and an asrock sata 939 mobo

[newmodder]

hey i was wondering the same thing...i have psu 450watt and says pentium 4 on it. i would sure like to know the same.but i am going to get an antec 550watt anyway.

[KennyT772]

well seeing how most pcs are intelbased (as far as prebuilts go) most lower end psus are marked as p4 complient so sooth nubs upgrading a psu. dont worryabout the p4 but you may want a higher amp psu. 16a is kinda low.

[trog100]

depends on the grfx card u have.. the 12 rail supplies that as well plus other things..

12 volts at 16 amps = 192 watts.. your cpu could draw 100 watts if clocked and so could a decent grfx card.. 200 watts.. work it out..

my power supply has two 12 volts rails 19 amps per rail = 38 amps at 12 volts or 456 watts.. soooo it all depends.. the pentium 4 bit means bugger all..

trog

ps.. my psu could be said to be overkill yours is at the other extreme..

[Aevum]

sorry kid, real men use 25 to 30 amp on the 12v line,

actually, depends on what your going to install, but 192watt for CPU and GPU, wont get you very far,

[newmodder]

i dont do a lot of overclocking..but i have 2 6600 gt pci-e cards that dont have the aux power connection(not require) but would a better power supply help? more amps on the 12volt rail.

[Steven B]

trog, first off you dont add the rails up. Thats why a single strong 33amp+ 12v rail is better than dual 19amp rails. Its also why you still see the Powerstream 520watt outselling the 600watt, because real overclockers will go for the single 12v rail. When you have dual rails, you cant just pass over power. Some of our systems draw alot more than 192 watts for mobo and cpu, just left alone my cpu can draw 220watts if i oc it to 5.3ghz, thats not even counting my mobo.

PSU can be a huge limiting factor, in the case of power consumption you should ussually see a huge drop or fluctuation from idle to load, but you need to use a multimeter to test out the voltage rails manually, and not with software. I would say now, the lowest should be 24amps for a mildly clocked A64, 28amps for mildly clocked P4, 32+ for any dual core/highly oced chip. Also add on 4 amps more if you got a high end video card, and 8 amps more if you got highend SLI or CF. Powersupplies are one of the most overlooked compenents in a PC. Most instability problems with hardware can be solved by getting a new PSU. Also you gotta look for higher quality PSUs; from Antec, Seasonic, OCZ, PC&P, zippy & e-mac. Just look aroudn hten look at reviews. Also its important that you stay away form aspire and ultra.

[Steven B]

Originally Posted by newmodder

i dont do a lot of overclocking..but i have 2 6600 gt pci-e cards that dont have the aux power connection(not require) but would a better power supply help? more amps on the 12volt rail.

You gotta tell us what you PSU is right now.

[newmodder]

safe power i think. 450 watt 18 amps on 12volt rail.
all it says on the side is ATX450 p4 i only pais 55 bucks for it.but i have the money to get a better one.i was looking at the Antec 550watt

[fuiop2000]

ok i was wondering if this psu is any good for upgrading:

Nikao Best Power 500Watt ATX P4/AMD 20/24Pin Dual Fan (+12v 28a, +5v 34a) (2YR MB)

Never heard of it, try OCZ/SEASONIC/PC&P/FPS that should get you a nice boost in power if you're running high end components overclocked as well. I'm pretty happy with my OCZ 520 Modstream which has 28amps on the 12v rail. I've tested it with my overclocks when i had my X800GTO and at load it would say 11.99-12.00 for the 12v rail with a multimeter and at IDLE i would see 12.15. I still haven't measured with this X1900XT that i just purchased recently. Wish me luck because i really can't afford a better PSU right now, but i think it should be fine since your 12v rail shouldn't fluctuate anything below 11.52 and above 12.3 or something like that.

[Steven B]

new modder, i think it would be in your best interest to go for that antec 550 watt, but which one? Im on newegg and there are 4 different ones. Also if you got the extra cash you could go for the powerstream 520watt, or even one of the seasonics.

Fuiop2000- that nikao best power only costs about $35, any 500watt PSU that costs under 80-100 is not what its cut out to be. I would steer clear of that PSU.

[fuiop2000]

hey steve,

im looking at the features of the nikao best power psu here: http://www.tradexinfo.com/best500w.htm

I dont seem to find any catches for this psu unless you notice one, it looks pretty good to me

[Steven B]

idk it look spretty crappy, you should stick with antec/fps/ocz if you want something cheaper

[fuiop2000]

hey steve,

you cant just base how good a psu is on how it looks

I emailed the manufacterers and the store and they both said the nikao best power is very good power supply unless you needed sli or crossfire which I dont have

[Steven B]

um, i didnt base it on how it looks, i based it on how its specs look to price. THats what generics costs, with specs of PSUs that costs $50 or so more. Did you mention your ocing? Also if you call up anyone that sells the PSU they will all tell you its a good psu

[trog100]

"trog, first off you dont add the rails up"

whats the point in having two rails if u cant add them up..???

i assumed dual rails was to stop overloading on the variouse sockets and connections and also keep cpu power seperate from other things..

clue me in on the point of having two seperate rails if u cant add then up.. not as i would fancy bunging 36 amps thru just the one..

surely two seperate 19 amp rails means 228 watts for cpu and things and another 228 watts for the grfx card and things.. or am i way of beam.. ????

nah.. of course u add them up i cant see any point in having them if u cant.. he he

trog

[Steven B]

lol, no you dont add em up, its to keep the power to cpu different from power to perpherals. You do add up the wattage, but if you pull too much from one, you dont get any form the other.... LIek if you were to pull 250 watts from your psu for the cpu (lets say some dual core intel), youd be 19x12=228 watts max form that rail, thats if yoru at the right tmeperature and if thats your peak or your continous. Your PSU wouldn't allocate the rails and take the other rail down to 17.2amps, and allocate 1.8amps/22 watts to your cpu.

[trog100]

nah.. from reading the specs on mine it seems clear u do add them up.. he he he

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/...st/page20.html

cant see how else our good friend tom would have managed to have bunged 600 watts thru it.. he he he

okay u cant bung any more than 19 amps (228 watts thru either one but but it seems u can have 2 x 19 amps..

dont get me wrong on some u dont.. but i think mine is genuine and u can..

am i reading u wrong or or u saying that two 19 amps rails are really just one 19 amp rail split in half capable of passing no more than a total of 19 amps and the manufacturer is cheating on his power claims.. i know some do.. ???

trog

[Steven B]

"am i reading u wrong or or u saying that two 19 amps rails are really just one 19 amp rail split in half capable of passing no more than a total of 19 amps and the manufacturer is cheating on his power claims.. i know some do.. ??? "

yes, i said that there are two 19amp rails, but you cant add them up because if you add them up you are stating that if you use more than 19 amps on one rail then you get some of the wattage from the other rail.

[trog100]

no u cant add then up in that sense.. but assuming there is enough on one rail 19 amps (228) watts as in my case u shouldnt ever have to.. but in the sense that 2 x 19 equals 36 in total and u do have that amount available u can add them up.. of course another thing that never crops up is just how much amperage the ancient not very clever plugs and sockets we use can actually carry.. 600 watts is one hell of a lot of power.. far more than even the average overclocked system needs.. the real problem here is that a lot of psu power ratings are way below what they are claimed to be..

we also dont need what a lot of folks seem to think we need.. assuming we get what they tell us we are getting.. he he he



trog

ps.. assuming the baby 6600 card is drawing about 30 watts or less than 3 amps.. the pair of sli monster cards would be drawing about 175 watts or 14.5 amps..

the cpu used i think was an FX60 which leaves about 170 watts being used for it and the rest of the bits and bobs the system used for the comparison had.. one can safely assume it would have been pretty basic not loaded down with tons of drives and such..

[Thermopylae_480]

Yeah. I can get a 700MHz CPU overclock with 17a on my 12V line on a 400Watt PSY and have room to overclock my video cards gpu almost 100MHz and my memory 222MHz. These are decent overclocks. I think I could get better with a better PSU. In fact I know I could. I'm definetly hitting a brick wall when it comes to power consumption. Just goes to show that you can still acomplish something even with a weak PSU though. Still if I was going to go out an buy a new PSU, it definetly would have at least 24a on the 12v. Or Trog's dual 19a, it sounds pretty decent.

[Steven B]

see trog your psu would work fine for baout 80% of hte poeple out there, but for poeple liek me who Will oc hteir processors past the 228 watt range it becomes a problem, lol thats why we use 1 single rail in an affordable psu, because we dont need to conserve 19 amps for our video card if your using a crappy pci one.

[trog100]

very true in extreme case steven.. but 36 amps on a single rail would be equally useless for someone that wanted to push their grfx cards to similar extremes at the same .. and however way u look at it we are talking "extremes"..

i recon your 80% should be more like 98% thow.. there arnt that many folks out there that wanna feed that much voltage thru a cpu on its own.. only for cpu benching records and experimental reasons.. but for those thta do your point is very valid one..

trog

[Steven B]

well im talking baout the enthusiast market, not the wide range of people, youd be suprised by the amount of poeple aruond who do push their systems.