FOUND: power supply

[Halon]

I have a dilemma. In order to save money a while back, I grabbed a 500W EVGA W1 power supply because I thought it was tolerable value in a time of shortage. I threw it into my weird desktop with a Radeon R9 280x and a Core i5 2400, and it turns out it's not enough to drive those along with a motherboard, drives, and all the trimmings. It isn’t dangerous - the system just locks up if I do demanding 3D for longer than a few seconds.

The power supply pricing situation has not improved a ton, and I don't feel like rolling the dice on EVGA B-stock. If you have a Radeon to sell with tolerable performance around 1080p and a TDP less than 150 watts, let me know. Off the top of my head, that could include a Radeon 7850/R7 265/R7 370, a Radeon RX 470/570, or even a 260(x)/360. 2GB VRAM is sufficient, but 4GB is certainly nice. If you'd be interested in a trade or partial trade for the 280x, let me know - it's clean, well taken care of, and reliable in a system with enough power to feed it. Thanks for looking.

 

[shadowghost]

I would've thought 500 watts would be more than enough for those components. Are you sure the PSU isn't defective? Have you tried undervolting the GPU / CPU? Or even a slight underclock/disabling turbo boost?

I just sold a Rx580, but FWIW that usually drew around ~140 watts during gaming at stock voltages with a very slight undervolt, so I think that would work for you too if you can find one.

 

[Halon]

I would've thought 500 watts would be more than enough for those components. Are you sure the PSU isn't defective? Have you tried undervolting the GPU / CPU? Or even a slight underclock/disabling turbo boost?

I just sold a Rx580, but FWIW that usually drew around ~140 watts during gaming at stock voltages with a very slight undervolt, so I think that would work for you too if you can find one.

I don't think it's defective, it just isn't a very good power supply. The W1/White is group regulated (didn't know that when I bought it) and 80 Plus certified, not even Bronze, so I'll take the blame for pouncing on what seemed like a good deal without doing enough research first. The suggestion to undervolt is a good one, but in Linux my ability to modify clocks or voltages doesn't really exist - Corectrl exposes enough functionality to put it into Low or High performance profiles, but nothing finer-grained than that.

Just going on TDP, a 95W CPU + 250W GPU would put the system up around 350 watts. The motherboard needs a few watts for itself, and it's also stuffed full of PCI cards it will need to use when it's up and running (it is a weird computer, to be clear), and drives take their pound of flesh along the way. It worked okay for an Athlon X4 860K with the same graphics card, but it only had a wireless NIC in it and fewer drives, so I probably ducked right under the threshold back then.

 

[SamirD]

Would a 550/650w power supply help instead? I know where to get some of these open box new cheap if you're interested.

 

[Halon]

Would a 550/650w power supply help instead? I know where to get some of these open box new cheap if you're interested.

I’d be happy to hear about it, so long as they’re quality and deliver that much reliably under load. DM me or share here, please!