The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I was thinking PSU but am now poor. I lose. It makes sense because I'm seeing some out of place voltages in Everest:
CPU Core 1.45 V
+3.3 V 3.39 V
+5 V 4.63 V
+12 V 12.32 V
+3.3 V Standby 3.39 V
VBAT Battery 3.33 V

The AMD site reckons the CPU voltage should be 1.10-1.40V and It's set to auto in BIOS. So that isn't great.

 

Alarm bells are ringing.

 

1.45v isn't dangerous on CPU. I'm currently using 1.45v on my CPU problem free.

Everything else looks okay-ish but the 5v worries me. A new PSU would be in order right quick. Cheap PSUs can completely destroy your PC right down to the case. I've seen them catch fire.

 

Depends what CPU, I wouldn't recommend it for one of the low voltage 1.05V chips. A volt-hungry Phenom won't be so bad though.

 

One day, electrical efficiency will appeal to me. Until then, my PhenomII can gobble it up with me grinning. Im very content with my wicked fast cpu

 

i could care less about CPU power draw aswell. As an overclocker, who gives a crap?

 

I can see where efficiency is important. But for the homestead...

As a company, buying 100's or more towers/setups, I can see where sparing every watt could be necessary. Im unsure of the math involved, comparing a phenomII to an i7. What I mean is, would it cost me 50cents less a month, to run an i7 opposed to my phenom. LOL!!! In a business, that computes obviously to A LOT more.

Heck, even 2-4 dollars less a month is negligible in my mind.

 

Really my PCs don't contribute a whole lot to our monthly power bill. We're just billed based on our family size and a projected power usage. We don't end up paying the difference so I can run pretty much any CPU I want right now. My Phenom II runs pretty cool and is respectably fast so as far as I'm concerned it's a good CPU.

 

To be honest, since power usage scales exponentially with voltage increase, power usage is more of a big deal for enthusiasts than you might think. Start off with a low heat output and you can crank the volts up a lot further without having to resort to risky water cooling, or very risky (and expensive) phase change or dry ice. On top of that, the same exponential power effect does have a dramatic effect on the electricity bill. If I turn the overclock off on my Q9550, I save a penny for every hour my PC's at idle, almost 2p per hour it's at load. Might not seem much, but at 1 hour of each a day that's £11, and it gets used far more than that. Then consider this is a 90W chip, with only a 150mV overvolt. Imagine a 140W chip like the 965BE, or 150W like the i7 (technically it's 125W, the X58 chipset I believe uses 25W more than the P45)
Omega: Once again, i7 vs Phenom II is a rather weak debate, especially for business companies, as they won't be after gaming performance. i7 vs core 2 would be a dramatic increase in cost though.
Jeff: Unmetered power usage? Never seen that in this country. It's done like that for water, but I'm sure you can appreciate you don't really need to pay per unit for water anyway since it isn't 'produced' exactly.

 

i7 from what i cant remember powers down cores on idle, so its idle should be lower.

as for servers, although the i7 cost more they get the work done in a much quicker time, thats its more efficient to go for i7

 

Point A: Not so, look at reviews. i7 idle power is just as bad as load
Point B: Exactly why there are so many i7s in use in that environment.

 

I was under the impression that the i7's were more electrically efficient? When I was comparing them(phenom/i7), I meant that the i7 would save money on the electrical bill. As marginal as it probably is...

 

I wasn't saying it was a bad voltage. I was saying it was concerning that my CPU voltage had been increased over the recommended amount without my doing.

I wonder how efficient my CPU is in comparison with my parents 95nm P4...

 

Ooh no no not at all, the i7 uses much more power than a Phenom II, probably more than an original Phenom as well. The i5s however, will be very efficient.
keith: Lol, most 90nm P4s were 90-95W TDP, so that's 95W for one core, even the i7s are only around 38-40W per core! Intel's low energy quads are only 16W per core.

 

I'm forever indebted to Omega for saying about XBMC a while back (I'm not sure it was this thread...) I'm currently working my way through 5 series's (what's the plural of series) of Peep Show in lovely upscaled HD.

I should get used to watching DVD's on the PC its evidently not doing any gaming in a while :-( Crashed on FUEL the other day...

 

So rather than fixing the problem you're just not going to use it? :S

 

I can't afford to fix it :'(

 

What needs replacing, did you decide? (Apart from the obvious)

 

Just my PSU nothing else seems damaged/bad. What I did was I kept Everest open while playing Crysis in a window and my 5v dropped even more just before the PC crashed.

So yeah its all good fun. Shouldn't be too long before I can afford a nice Corsair unit mind. I've somehow accidentally without realising built up a small IT call out business. Mind you if our lass* wants to go anywhere (which she's been hinting at) I may be further away then I think.

EDIT: *That's Yorkshire speak for girlfriend. I should probably stop typing in Yorkshire for the benefit of all.

 

I know what a lass is - besides, I spend more than half the year in Yorkshire anyway. Since a system like that will run fine off a 400W CX, it's only £40 to fix the issue.