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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3985 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 27, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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It is worth getting a bigger power supply for sure before doing anything else; every weird computer problem I have ever failed to troubleshoot was resolved by getting a new PSU.

You can get a 750w 80+ gold pus on amazon with free returns; give it a shot and see if you can reproduce the crashes.

+1. You could get a power meter to see if you're near 600w, or use a calculator, but it seems likely. You've clearly put work into having good airflow/thermals, so this is the main thing that's left.

It might be expectedly failing before 600w, too. IIRC that rating is the sum of what can be put out at each voltage, and it's possible to exceed the maximum draw at one voltage without exceeding the total max, and combining newer components with older PSUs makes that imbalance easier to trigger.

it's possible to exceed the maximum draw at one voltage without exceeding the total max

This is also manufacturer-dependent; higher-quality power supplies tend to be able to supply the vast majority or all of its rating on 12V alone, while junk PSUs tend to list "500W" but neglect to mention that it can only output 300W as 12V (so from a modern PC standpoint it's only a 300W PSU- the better CPUs can pull 180W 24/7 and even ancient GPUs need about 200W- so if you try that you're already tripping overcurrent... if it even has one, that is).

Basically nothing uses 3.3 or 5V any more (aside from non-NVMe storage), to the point the new ATX standard removes them entirely (instead relying on the mainboard to downconvert 12V input, something it already does for the CPU to turn an input of 12 volts at 15 amps into 1 volt at 180 amps).

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