Argggh Power Supply Death

[snoopy]

So, my power supply died the other day. Now, my hard drive is starting to act strangely.

Why do you guys think: am I overloading my power supply?

650 Watts supporting:
Phenom 850 (95 W)
2 x 2GB DDR2 ram
GE Force GTX-460
2 hard drives
1 CD Burner
A TV Capture Card
A bunch of USB devices

[Valin Halcyon]

Definitely. I draw only a little more more than that, but use a 1000 watt PSU. For a single GPU, I'd recommend an 850 watt minimum. 650s are for OEM PCs with virtually no accessories. You've also got to remember that PSUs generate fewer watts the hotter they get, and in order to make the numbers look nice, manufacturers tend to slap the rating on the PSU that it achieves at room temp, not peak operating temp. I'd not be surprised your 650 watt PSU is only $400 or so when warm. My 1000 watt tends to dip to about 900 at peak temp.

[Krom]

Definitely NOT. I have a vaguely similar system (i7-2700k/95w, 8 GB DDR3, GTX 460, 1 SSD, 3 HDD, 1 BD-RW) on a 700w OCZ PSU, when I actually measured it with a kill-a-watt meter it draws 90 watts at the outlet while idle and load is less than 300 watts. I got it to pull around 270w running a well threaded game benchmark, I probably could have pulled a little more power by combining various synthetic/stress benchmaks, but not much more. The power spec for a GTX 460 is 170w and your CPU pulls another 95w which you can add up to 265w and those are the biggest users in a system. Hard drives pull a trivial amount typically less than 5 watts, ditto for optical drives, the RAM is a drop in the bucket of 1-2 watts or less, and the typical fan is 0.3 watts. USB is capped at a maximum of 2.5 watts (500mA @ 5v) per port. Keep in mind that the power at the outlet is going to be higher than the power that the PSU is delivering because most PSUs are only about 75-85% efficient depending on the load level.

VH, OEM PCs typically ship with PSUs in the 150-200w range, I've personally seen as low as a 90w operating a Dell Pentium 4 system. For a common single GPU desktop system at stock clocks there is basically no chance of ever overloading the PSU once you go larger than 400 watts.

[roid]

my new PC refuses to post if i have too much USB stuff charging.
and since you are all figments of my subconscious, USB is probably your problem too

[Valin Halcyon]

Oh, right. I missed the single GPU bit. I have tri-SLI.

[Isaac]

my new PC refuses to post if i have too much USB stuff charging.
and since you are all figments of my subconscious, USB is probably your problem too

You don't even have a computer. It's block of cheese you're typing on. And your Swiss fire-wall is full of holes.

[roid]

[youtube]evrVQDxPaww[/youtube]

[snoopy]

Doing an in-depth scan on the drive now.

3:45 in and 30%.... good thing I have all day.