this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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I've been experiencing instability with my system, and I'm beginning to suspect that the PSU is either faulty or under-provisioned. I'll get random crashes (reboots, more specifically), mostly when doing something intensive on the system like starting up a game. Looking at all the crash logs, I can't really find any errors that make sense to me. When the system goes down, all the lights & fans all die at the same time as the screen, then after a couple of seconds it comes back on and reboots.

I have a Corsair SF600 SFX PSU which is only 600W, and I'm powering a Ryzen 3700x, a AMD 5700XT GPU, a 1TB M.2 SSD, 32G ddr4 memory, 2 case fans, and a water-cooling pump. Plugging all of that into a calculator says that 600W is exactly enough, but is that right? Or could power-usage spikes be pushing things over the edge?

Edit: Sorry, CPU is a 3800X not 3700X. Just FYI

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[–] PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sounds plausible to me. Usually you want to leave a couple of hundred watts of headroom on a PSU.

[–] nopersonalspace@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Do you think 750W would cut it? Corsair makes a 750W version of the PSU I'm using so it would be an easy drop-in replacement

[–] PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That would probably cover it but I'd personally go a little higher if I had the budget/space to.

You'll never have too much power and who knows what the power draw of your next upgrade might be? 800W would be better and 1000W would be enough for any PC you're likely to build. Anything higher is likely a waste of cash.

Unless you have an unusually small case (or buy the beefiest PSU), anything should be a drop in replacement. If it's a modular PSU and you just want to plug the same cables in, just be careful they're definitely the same cables. I think Corsair has a cable compatibility chart somewhere on their site.

[–] nopersonalspace@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

It's a SFF case so I can only use SFX psu instead of normal sized ones. That limits my options a lot, but I'll see if I can't find a bigger one.