Can a weak PSU cause TDR's?

[Cookybiscuit]

I was told a while ago that if your PSU isn't good enough for the system you have it would be pretty obvious, as in, the system would just shut off when you try and run games. I've been trying to use a 520W PSU and a 980Ti and haven't really been having much luck. I've been getting graphical artifacts in a few games and crashing with the 'Nvidia display driver stopped working...' notification pretty often. At the worst times I couldn't go 5 minutes without crashing, other times I can play games for an hour or two before it crashes. I put the card in a system with a 650W PSU and played games on it for like 9 hours and not one TDR. Also have not had any crashes at all using a 760, R9290 or a 780, which are all obviously lower power draw cards. 

 

I've tried all the drivers including the hotfix ones, and even tried reinstalling Windows and the games I was playing but nothing works. Do I just bite the bullet and buy a new PSU, or is there a chance its something else? The system is:

 

980Ti MSI Gaming

OC'd 3570K

16GB Corsair RAM

Asrock Extreme 4 Z77

Seasonic Fanless 520W

 

Thanks.

[STRMfrmXMN]

I was told a while ago that if your PSU isn't good enough for the system you have it would be pretty obvious, as in, the system would just shut off when you try and run games. I've been trying to use a 520W PSU and a 980Ti and haven't really been having much luck. I've been getting graphical artifacts in a few games and crashing with the 'Nvidia display driver stopped working...' notification pretty often. At the worst times I couldn't go 5 minutes without crashing, other times I can play games for an hour or two before it crashes. I put the card in a system with a 650W PSU and played games on it for like 9 hours and not one TDR. Also have not had any crashes at all using a 760, R9290 or a 780, which are all obviously lower power draw cards. 

 

I've tried all the drivers including the hotfix ones, and even tried reinstalling Windows and the games I was playing but nothing works. Do I just bite the bullet and buy a new PSU, or is there a chance its something else? The system is:

 

980Ti MSI Gaming

OC'd 3570K

16GB Corsair RAM

Asrock Extreme 4 Z77

Seasonic Fanless 520W

 

Thanks.

You have plenty of wattage. Try undervolting the GPU and run it at lower clock speeds so it produces less heat. Something tells me that a fanless PSU was not a good idea in your system.

[MEC-777]

R9 290 draws as much power as a 980Ti easily, so that's a little odd. Are you OCing the 980Ti?

 

Regardless, I would strongly recommend upgrading the PSU. At least a 650w 80+ gold for that setup, IMO.

[Cookybiscuit]

I've got a wall meter that says how much power the system is using, it tops out at around 450w with the 980Ti and about 400w with the R9290, but I can't remember if the 980Ti was overclocked at the time. Yes I had the 980Ti overclocked, but it still crashes at stock clocks.

 

I had got super frustrtated a week ago and done what you said STRM and underclocked the card to like 500Mhz and with the clocks at that I still didn't manage to have the card run long enough to get through the opening cinematic in GTA Online. But saying that I didn't know at the time you could check the event viewer in windows to see if it was the game that crashed or the driver that crashed, so it could have just been the game messing up.

 

I suppose I'll put the card back in and just see what happens, but it sort of feels like I'm banging my head against a wall. On heat, the case is a NZXT Phantom 410, all the fan slots are occupied and are set in Speedfan to spin up pretty high, but I dunno I suppose since I'm pretty close to what the PSU can put out and its in a hot case it might be overheating.

[Praesi]

My Guess. Your PSU is too weak. Get at least 650w gold+

[yippy3000]

Nvidia has had a known issue with a TDR bug in their drivers for quite some time.  If this hotfix doesn't fix it https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3694/  then I have heard that downgrading to 350.12 (uninstall completely, the install 350.12)

 

Here is a thread if you haven't found it already with some other things to try.  Down near the bottom of the first post you will find notes of a bunch of causes and some links to fixes https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/389688/geforce-drivers/nvidia-statement-on-tdr-errors-display-driver-nvlddmkm-stopped-/

[Cookybiscuit]

Nvidia has had a known issue with a TDR bug in their drivers for quite some time.  If this hotfix doesn't fix it https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3694/  then I have heard that downgrading to 350.12 (uninstall completely, the install 350.12)

 

Here is a thread if you haven't found it already with some other things to try.  Down near the bottom of the first post you will find notes of a bunch of causes and some links to fixes https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/389688/geforce-drivers/nvidia-statement-on-tdr-errors-display-driver-nvlddmkm-stopped-/

350.12 supports 980Ti?

 

And yeah, I've crashed twice in an hour and a half on GTA 5 Online, but with the other PSU it went all day without crashing. Though, it is worth saying, its a totally different system, so maybe theres something else at play. 

[yippy3000]

350.12 supports 980Ti?

 

And yeah, I've crashed twice in an hour and a half on GTA 5 Online, but with the other PSU it went all day without crashing. Though, it is worth saying, its a totally different system, so maybe theres something else at play. 

Oh, I didn't think about that.  350.12 probably does not support the 980 ti.  It could be the PSU, the thread I linked though said it could be RAM timings or a driver conflict as well.

[techenthused73]

I would say the PSU could be the culprit.   I once had a corsair 750 watt PSU and had upgraded to a GTX 580 .  While running the system shut down while playing Skyrim.  I upgraded the PSU to a HX1050 and never have had a problem since.   Never go cheap on PSU I've experienced and others have said the same.   I imagine a 980 Ti pulls just as much power as a 780 .   Don't forget that there are power spikes generated by GPU's , especially during gaming.   GTA 5 pulls a lot of GPU resources.  Precision shows me that GTA 5 is asking for 3.8 GB of VRAM even on a 1080p display using GeForce Experience recommended settings. 

 

As far as TDR's on latest drivers, I have yet to have one. 

[Cookybiscuit]

Well I tried even downclocking the card as far as it would let me and capping the power limit to 54% and it still crashed, so I'm really not sure if its the PSU if its crashing at 900Mhz on the core. I suppose the last step is to just pull the PSU out of the system it works in and see if it works in my system. 

 

What could be the problem with RAM timings? I was recently running generic no name RAM but moved to 1600Mhz 16GB Corsair memory, should I try downclocking the RAM or something?