PSU needs an upgrade

[Phoenex]

Hi all,

I built a box a while back and had made a little mistake when I first built it. I ordered a PSU that had a single 8 pin P4 connector while my motherboard can take two. This hasn't seemed like too big of a deal as I can achieve the clocks I wanted without getting too high in the thermals, but I do wonder if this has been holding back my performance. When I was looking for a PSU, I don't remember seeing much information about the P4 connectors, as the advertising mostly focused on power efficiency, wattage, and PCIE 6/8 pin connectors. How can I be sure of what I am getting when I go to purchase an upgrade? How much performance am I likely losing by only having a single P4 connector plugged into my motherboard?

 

My build:

Ryzen 5 2600x @ 4.2 MHz with stock cooler

Radeon R9 380x @ 1440 MHz core, 1540 MHz memory

32GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3200 MHz

Samsung 970 evo 250GB, Intel 180GB SSD, Seagate Barracuda 250GB HD, WD blue 1TB HD

EVGA 600W PSU 80+

 

Here's a bench I did on it last week:

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/16345320

 

PS - I'm sure some of you will have some ideas that my graphics should probably be getting the first upgrade, which I probably will if you all don't think my PSU is causing me any CPU issues. I was able to get this graphics card for a cheap $60 as it had been used as a mining GPU. **cue the "don't by mining cards" rant** It has been running perfectly for me so far and I've been happy with it for now.

[Oalei]

no no its good to have a good PSU for your rig rather than a gpu, idk what EVGA that is probably the white 1. you can check the psu tier list for some choices

[seon123]

25 minutes ago, Phoenex said:

but I do wonder if this has been holding back my performance.

It's not. The extra 4 pin connector is as useless as RGB.

If the PSU you got is the EVGA W1, you got an absolute piece of crap, so you should consider replacing it anyway. 

[.Apex.]

24 minutes ago, Phoenex said:

I built a box a while back and had made a little mistake when I first built it. I ordered a PSU that had a single 8 pin P4 connector while my motherboard can take two. This hasn't seemed like too big of a deal as I can achieve the clocks I wanted without getting too high in the thermals, but I do wonder if this has been holding back my performance. When I was looking for a PSU, I don't remember seeing much information about the P4 connectors, as the advertising mostly focused on power efficiency, wattage, and PCIE 6/8 pin connectors. How can I be sure of what I am getting when I go to purchase an upgrade? How much performance am I likely losing by only having a single P4 connector plugged into my motherboard? 

 

You're not losing anything, the extra 8 Pin connection is kinda pointless, you can easily overclock a 9900K on one 8 Pin connector without any issues, and that's not how electricity works, you don't "lose" performance because you're not providing enough power, if there's a heavy voltage drop then the system will shut down

[Phoenex]

1 hour ago, _Syn_ said:

You're not losing anything, the extra 8 Pin connection is kinda pointless, you can easily overclock a 9900K on one 8 Pin connector without any issues, and that's not how electricity works, you don't "lose" performance because you're not providing enough power, if there's a heavy voltage drop then the system will shut down

It's not so much as the power provided as it would be thermal build up causing other throttling. A good simple V = I x R will tell you that as you get the higher voltage on a fixed current, the resistance must go up thus more heat introduced to the system. Anyways, from other responses it doesn't seem like missing a cable that could provide more overall current will be hurting much anyways.

[Phoenex]

1 hour ago, seon123 said:

It's not. The extra 4 pin connector is as useless as RGB.

If the PSU you got is the EVGA W1, you got an absolute piece of crap, so you should consider replacing it anyway. 

I can't remember exactly which one it is and I can't find it's box... What makes the W1 so bad so I can avoid similar ones next time?

[.Apex.]

14 minutes ago, Phoenex said:

It's not so much as the power provided as it would be thermal build up causing other throttling. A good simple V = I x R will tell you that as you get the higher voltage on a fixed current, the resistance must go up thus more heat introduced to the system. Anyways, from other responses it doesn't seem like missing a cable that could provide more overall current will be hurting much anyways.

what other throttling? are you talking about VRM's? yeah they would be less efficient (assuming the voltage drop is high, which it isn't) and therefor would cause more heat, but it doesn't affect the CPU in terms of the power delivered to it or the performance, but there might be instability issues like I said because of the voltage fluctuations, but again that's assuming there's a stupid amount of voltage drop on the 12V cables.

also current isn't fixed, resistance is (kinda)

[seon123]

38 minutes ago, Phoenex said:

I can't remember exactly which one it is and I can't find it's box... What makes the W1 so bad so I can avoid similar ones next time?

The W1 is a super low end group regulated PSU. 

You can avoid buying bad PSUs by simply reading reviews of the products you are going to buy.