Please help & self welcome

ConZo · June 20, 2017

Howdy everyone.

My name is Conrad and I am from the Gold Coast, QLD - Australia!

Please excuse my first post, asking for help already...

I recently put together a budget machine for myself with used parts and I am having an odd issue or two.

1) I can't seem to get Windows 10 to run stable, explorer seems to randomly crash and stop responding, but the system appears to stutter prior to this happening and by stutter I mean it locks up for a split second and then continues on.

2) Running Windows 7 is stable, however whenever I game I get micro stutters, this seems to happen in both Spintires and Unigine Valley. The games don't crash, just "stutter".

Now I have tested the RAM, it passes memtest and the CPU passes stress tests. All temperatures are in check (CPU hits around 60c and GPU 80c under full load) for a small mATX build.

I am guessing my week point here is the powersupply. I thought I could get away with running a ZALMAN ZM500-GS 500w power supply but I am second guessing that now.

It appears going by the spec sheet the PSU is more like a 450w and can only do 360w across both 12v rails.

Build specs:

i7 2600
8GB DDRIII
B75M-D3H
2x 3TB WD Reds
1x 480GB Crucial SSD
EVGA GTX 980

Any advice would be appreciated, as you can probably tell I am on a tight budget and don't want to spend money on another power supply if I should be looking elsewhere to diagnose the fault.