secret peter

So I've just finished school about a month ago and had been looking forward to getting back into gaming and mixing some music on Ableton. Let me take you through my pain.

In october, my 8600gts kicked the bucket. Gave a [long short short] beep code, and that was that. Checked the output voltages of the 6-pin PCI-E power connector, which were fine. I'm in the process of claiming it on warranty.

Propping my PC up with a friend's spare GPU, I then noticed one of my samsung SATA hard drives had started clicking, and would freeze up the entire system when I tried to access some files. I salvaged my music and took the drive out.

I reinstalled vista (Spare me it, I'm waiting for the warranty claim to upgrade to win7...) once I upgraded to a GTS 250, which is installed and runs *ok*. Trouble is, the system performance is more sluggish than I ever remember it, and performs quite badly in benchmarks (scored a measly 5476 on 3D Mark vantage, compared to 8280 by http://www.tweaktown.com/print/reviews/1789/index.html).

My specs are:

- AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+
- Total Physical Memory 3.48 GB (32-bit vista, 4gb physical memory)
- Samsung HD250HJ SCSI Hard Drive (had been running an additional 500gb of the same brand)
- Gigabyte M52S-S3P motherboard
- Gigabyte 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250
- Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio sound card
- GTR 450w PSU

I'm worried there's a problem somewhere that's dragging everything down. Or is it as simple as 'get a bigger psu'?

TwoCables

I would say that you need a better PSU, not a bigger one. But since that would cost money, how much would you be able to spend on a PSU?

I am guessing that the absolute maximum you would need to spend on a better PSU is absolutely no more than approximately $110 AUD. But it would probably around $70. I'm basing this off of the conversion rate from USD to AUD. I mean, I was going to say "no more than $100". But then I noticed that I should be using AUD, so I converted it.

So, what I am saying is that the solution very well could be a better PSU in the 450-500W range. And there's one more thing: I've seen people say that the PSU can be the culprit when there's less than the expected performance out of a graphics card.

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secret peter

Ok, so better as in a good brand with over/under volt protection etc? Not sure how well protected my current one is.

Could small irregularities in power from a cheaper PSU damage components over time? I suppose I'm just joining the dots with that hard drive fault and worried there could be more trouble.

Thanks for the reply mate.

TwoCables

I don't know if those could damage components over time (although it wouldn't surprise me), but if PSU such as this one fails, then it could do anything from damaging a component to killing a component all the way to killing multiple components. Worst of all, a PSU failure by a cheap PSU could kill an entire system. There's no way to predict what damage a PSU failure would do.

But yeah, a better PSU with all of those fancy features is much preferred - especially with nice components like yours, and especially for overclocking.

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TheJack

If you're feeling like really improving your computer aside from the psu you need a new processor. That'll contribute to a huge jump in fps in newer games.

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firestormcomputers

That PSU may very well be the culprit, quite a coincidence multiple parts are "kickin' it" at the same time, eh?

The PSU might be going bad.

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