In Big B's thread he states that Ultra produces good PSU's except for the X-Connect series, but I have gotten wind of Ultras not being a great PSU to begin with... My Issue: Random system failure, resulting in the reboot of my pc. My Gear: MSI K9 SLI Platinum -Motherboard 64 X2 Athlon Dual Core, 3800 -Processor 6800 256mb Geforce Xtreme -Graphic card 2x 512 Corsair DDR Ram 1gb Wester Digital SATA Hard drive 500w Ultra V-Series Power supply I'm running Cool n Quiet, no overclock. CPU runs around 35ºc My attention was pushed towards my power supply and my ram, I'm working on a test for my ram now, but I'm looking for suggestions about my PSU. Thank you very much. ~Mofrait
From what I understand, the V series are based on the X-Connects, not the X-Finity's, which at this point seemed to have been alright.
Hmm.. Do you know what the most common problem with the X-Connect is? And any recommendations? I'm a "nub".
The issue is if you exceed the maximum load it can produce. If you do that, they've been known to blow up (and have in two reviews that I'm aware of). The low-end pricing for most decent PSU's runs between $80-120, and here's some of the common units: -Enermax EG565P-VE (535W) (I run one myself) -Antec TruePower TPII-550 (550W) -Tagan TG480-U22 (480W) -OCZ Powerstream520 (520W) -Fortron/FSP Group AX-500 'Blue Storm' -Seasonic S12-500 (500W) -Silverstone SST-ST52F (520W) -Silverstone SST-ST56F (560W) Anything on this list would be a solid choice.
This is GREAT info, but would a power supply actually cause the error I stated above? Thanks alot BB ~Mofrait
Yes. When in use, components will draw more juice than when at idle. If under these conditions the power supply cannot provide the necessary levels (within a +/- 5% tolerance) errors can happen. If this would happen to calculations or the RAM, you can get corrupted data, which pile up and cause errors. Now, is this to say for certain your PSU is at fault? No. I would measure the 12V rails to see if you're within tolerance. There's a link on how to do that in the PSU Sticky. If that passes, I'd test your RAM with [google]Memtest[/google] which you can run off a floppy or CD. Then I'd snag [google]Prime 95[/google]. Memtest should be run for at least a few hours to give your RAM a good thrashing. Prime 95 should be run for a full 24 hours continuously. Memtest test your RAM for errors, and takes a few passes to get your RAM warmed up to where you'd start getting stress issues. Prime 95 should give no errors during the 24hr testing. Again, this is assuming the PSU is at fault. The only way to pinpoint the problem is to test. A bad PSU can cause these problems, but so can bad RAM or an overheating CPU.
