How would you know if your PSU isn't enough?

[Cookybiscuit]

I recently got a 980Ti and I'm getting nothing but headaches from it. I used to have a 780, so I figured since the power draw is near identical my PSU will be able to run it fine. The PSU is a 520W Seasonic Fanless PSU, the wall meter I've got says the system is pulling at max about 460W, which is when the GPU is at 99% and most of the CPU cores (3570K at 4.5Ghz).

 

Over the last few days I've not really been able to play anything for more than a few minutes without something messing up. Alot of the times in games I'll just get random flickering on the screen, and it seems almost all the games I've tested just crash or blue screen within minutes. 

 

I've even tried turning down the power target in MSI Afterburner to as low as it will go and it still crashes. I'm really not sure how to tell if its a PSU problem or a driver problem, as for the first few days I used it, I didn't really have that many problems with it.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks.

[ZetZet]

Sounds like faulty gpu to me. 

 

PSU in my experience just freezes the system or shutdown/restart.

[Dabombinable]

The PSU will either refuse to work, or you'll get crashes (blue screen etc). I had an old PSU for example that was originally 350W, but it had degraded that badly over the years that eventually it could only power the Celeron 500, 10GB HDD, 2x 128MB SDRAM sticks, and the Riva 128ZX. As soon as I unplugged the CD drive or HDD it didn't have any problems.

[slightlyjaded]

I recently got a 980Ti and I'm getting nothing but headaches from it. I used to have a 780, so I figured since the power draw is near identical my PSU will be able to run it fine. The PSU is a 520W Seasonic Fanless PSU, the wall meter I've got says the system is pulling at max about 460W, which is when the GPU is at 99% and most of the CPU cores (3570K at 4.5Ghz).

 

Over the last few days I've not really been able to play anything for more than a few minutes without something messing up. Alot of the times in games I'll just get random flickering on the screen, and it seems almost all the games I've tested just crash or blue screen within minutes. 

 

I've even tried turning down the power target in MSI Afterburner to as low as it will go and it still crashes. I'm really not sure how to tell if its a PSU problem or a driver problem, as for the first few days I used it, I didn't really have that many problems with it.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks.

You know your PSU doesn't deliver enough power because your entire computer goes Zot!!!. Seriously it juist shuts down, no blue screen of death, no nothing.

 

I have noticed a problem with 900 series cards, and their power optimisation software. I had problems with witcher, and far cry crashing, and the issue being the nividia driver (windows event reporter) I fixed a lot of it by deactivating the PCIe power optimisation in advanced power options.

[Cookybiscuit]

Thanks. I suppose the only thing I can do then is just try the GPU in another system and see what happens.

[SkilledRebuilds]

How many AMPS can your PSU provide on the 12v

GTX 970 wants 28amps.

[slightlyjaded]

Thanks. I suppose the only thing I can do then is just try the GPU in another system and see what happens.

By the way, you pump more power into a component to keep it stable, not less. If you're overclocking it and the gpu isn't stable you'll get artifacting (that flickering you described) You can improve you stability by putting more power into the GPU. I have no idea what the recommended voltage limits are for the 980Ti, you'd have to ask some of the community's hardcore overclockers that.

[Cookybiscuit]

By the way, you pump more power into a component to keep it stable, not less. If you're overclocking it and the gpu isn't stable you'll get artifacting (that flickering you described) You can improve you stability by putting more power into the GPU. I have no idea what the recommended voltage limits are for the 980Ti, you'd have to ask some of the community's hardcore overclockers that.

No I mean the power target not the voltage. So the card was only clocking to like 700Mhz and I was still getting crashes.