I have Threadripper 1950x and two 1080s on a 850watt PSU, do I need a better PSU?

[jerrac]

So, I've had stability issues since I built my system last summer. Haven't had time to really dig in and figure them out, but recently I started wondering if they were caused by not having enough power. Typically, my system would shut down when I was using both of my GPU's for some task. (Folding@Home, Mandelbulber, etc.)

 

Here's my system:

 

• Motherboard: ASUS PRIME X399-A
• CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950X
• CPU AIO: CORSAIR Hydro Series H100i v2 AIO Liquid CPU Cooler, 240mm Radiator, Dual 120mm PWM Fans
• Case Cooling: 8 120mm fans. (Corsair and BeQuiet)
• RAM: Two 16GB Patriot Memory Viper Elite Series DDR4 16GB 2400MHz
• GPU 1: Gigabyte GeForce® GTX 1080 WINDFORCE OC 8G
• GPU 2: Gigabyte GeForce® GTX 1080 WINDFORCE OC 8G
• Storage:
  • 1TB SATA 3 SSD for my boot drive.
  • 3 Seagate 4TB HDDs
  • 2 Western Digital 4TB HDDs
• PSU: EVGA Supernova 850 G2, 80+ Gold 850W

The reason I've built it with Threadripper and 2 GPU's is so I can set up Linux as my main OS. One GPU for games that run under Linux, one I can pass through to a virtual machine for Windows only games and apps. All the CPU cores because I have several other virtual machines I'll want to run. (FreeNAS for storage, possibly a firewall for my home network, just general development stuff for work.) I've actually been planning this for years, even before that first LTT video on the subject.

 

My long term plan is to upgrade to a newer Threadripper in a couple years, add more RAM for my virtual machines, and eventually upgrade to newer GPU's.

 

I tried ASUS's built in overclocking via BIOS, but turned it off when I had stability issues with it.

 

With all that said, is my EVGA 850 watt PSU enough? Both right now, and down the road?

 

Thanks!

 

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, jerrac said:

With all that said, is my EVGA 850 watt PSU enough? Both right now, and down the road?

As for right now, you've got about 200 watts for each GPU and 200 for the CPU, so 600 watts for the main hardware give or take, (and that's an over estimate)

 

As for the future, it really depends. We don't know what the exact power draw of new Ryzen CPUs will be and what core count you're aiming for, but if you don't go all out, you should still have plenty of room.

[Guest]

I used an RM850i for a 1950X and 2 1080 Tis.

It never failed on me, but I did move to 1000 watts when I started folding@home heavily.

Then moved to 1200 when I got my 2950X.

[Shnitzil]

850w psu will be good to support the pc

 ps: it can also power my house

[jerrac]

So, it sounds like I should be ok, but I'm close to the edge of needing more?

[Jurrunio]

3 minutes ago, jerrac said:

So, it sounds like I should be ok, but I'm close to the edge of needing more?

when overclocked, yes

[jerrac]

Ok, looks like I need to dig deeper into what is actually going on when my system shuts down on me.

 

Thanks everyone!

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, jerrac said:

Ok, looks like I need to dig deeper into what is actually going on when my system shuts down on me.

 

Thanks everyone!

What are your temps like?

[TheGlenlivet]

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

 

Get one of these to be sure.  You have a lot of fans, a pump and multiple hard drives all going too.  

 

My TR issues have always been RAM related for hardware (had 1 bad dimm and wont OC 4 8gb dimms to a rated 3600mhz)  and windows related for software.

[Mattias Edeslatt]

36 minutes ago, jerrac said:

Ok, looks like I need to dig deeper into what is actually going on when my system shuts down on me.

 

Thanks everyone!

Get a power meter, a kill-a-watt, and get some accurate reading of what your system draws under certain loads. You be surprised of how little a system draws even under heavy loads and overclocking. 

 

There could be reasons you need a higher watt PSU, like specific numbers of 8-pin connectors for GPU and/or CPU, there might be better designs and protections or the option of multi-rail, but the sole reason of the specific need for such high wattage in rarely the reason.

 

That is why "we" often talks more about to look at functions and specifications and get a PSU with good quality, not one with higher wattage as that is not a guarantee for "better/higher" quality.

 

Your system shouldn't be starving for power, but a power meter should get us some hard numbers on that. Does the system restart with only one card under full load? Is there a difference in which card that is used? Have you double checked all connections? Take all connections loose and re-seat them again to make sure there are no loose connections.  Take out RAM and GPU:s to and re-seat them also, bad connections can cause many strange issues and manifest itself in many strange ways.

 

Have you checked the temps? To rule out heat issues to be the source of problems.

 

Are you overclocking? Set everything to stock and test. If OK, then change one variable at the time to find what and when the problem starts. Have you done a factory reset of your BIOS/UEFI? Could be some setting there that could cause the problem.

[Daniel644]

if overclocked and folding on all hardware then YES, you'll lose 400-500 watts to the 2 overclocked GPU's easy (at 80% power limit my Titan Xp's do 200 watts when folding) in fact my total system draw for a 3.8 GHz all core OC on an r7 1700 and a single Titan Xp at 80% power limit is 380 watts from the wall when all are folding and all the fans and everything running.

 

might potentially also be a cooling issue, the cold plate of that AIO doesn't really cover the IHS of threadripper (from what I remember it barely contacts the areas directly above the dies).

 

you could tell if it's a power issue by opening whatever you use for GPU overclocking and lowering the power limit all the way down (it stops at like 50% or something like that), this will massively reduce the power draw of the GPU's.

[jerrac]

So, I plan on some basic troubleshooting before I post any more here.

 

Temps are an obvious angle to check. The thing is, I have had a really hard time finding a decent monitoring tool. The best I've found so far is HWInfo, but it doesn't have built in graphs, and you have to manually start both the program, and the logging. Plus, if your system shut down on it, it does that whole "didn't shut down cleanly" message and restart....

 

Any suggestions?

 

I'll also be trying to make sure I can replicate the issue consistently.... Or at least as consistently as I can....

 

 

[jerrac]

Apologies for bumping my old thread, but I do want to post an update.

 

My instability issues have gone away. So it wasn't my power supply or my cooling.

 

Thinking back, I'm 90% sure they were due to only having 1 sick of 16gb ram. I have since upgraded to 4 sticks of 16gb.

 

The stability problems went away before this, but I have also switched to Linux as my main OS, and I have Windows virtualized. Though, it seems perfectly stable with just 12gb of ram assigned to it...

 

Anyway, thanks for all the help!

 

 

[Guest]

On 4/30/2019 at 12:23 PM, jerrac said:

So, I've had stability issues since I built my system last summer. Haven't had time to really dig in and figure them out, but recently I started wondering if they were caused by not having enough power. Typically, my system would shut down when I was using both of my GPU's for some task. (Folding@Home, Mandelbulber, etc.)

So your PC would literally shut off as if you powered down the system, right?