Using 2 PSU has CLoD kicking it in high gear!
 

I'v put 2 PSU's on the PC. 500 and 550 watt.

1280-1024 60Hz

Pseudo

AA-x8

AEF-off

SSAO-on

VSYNC-ON

TG- original

The 1st video is with the CloD settings at Med.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSSfQZBLH2g


The 2ed video is with the settings on Med/high. Med BD and Forest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFiRDeib-oE


The 3ed video is with the settings on high/Very high with the new Nvidia 275.33-desktop-win7-winvista-64bit drivers.Very high-BD and Forest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUiRipVZ6Is


Althrough I can fly CLoD at the very high settings I'm going to put the forest at high or med.

With this set up seams the higher the settings the better the sim plays and looks.

This is how I have the PSU'S set up on the PC:

500 and 550 watt on the GPU.
550 watt on MOBO
500 watt on HD and CD/DVD player

After doing this the PC loads and run's faster. And CLoD plays and looks better on my PC than it ever has.

If you have a high end PC and CLod is not playing very well it could be your PSU.

I did not want to get a high Watt PSU when I had others not being used. As it turns out this may work better then getting one PSU with more watts.

This is the link to the page that tells how to do this:
http://www.absoluteinsight.net/21


The main thing that I didn't know was how to put the jumpers to turn on the PSU. The PSU that I add has a switch for off and on. And have it in the back of the PC on the out side With all the wires on the inside of the case other then the 110AC power cord.



If you need to or just want to add more watts to your PC and have some PSU's not being used this is a money saver.


flyer01

PS: Its up to the sim'er to work with there video card to get CLoD or any other sim to work the best in there PC.

Now that is very interesting.

My psu is a Dell supplied 350w unit, which may not even power my card adequately.

Performance with Cliffs of Dover is ok, but missions over London are a no-no.

If a new psu would provide a performance gain, I'd be happy to shell out on this first, rather than a card upgrade+psu, because of course if I upgrade my card, I'll definately need to change the psu.

Any advice?

Thanks! :)

please PLEASE update your PSUs. A 500w is not enough for an nvidia and a 350w not enough for a 5770. You risk damaging your components.

I wonder how many complains about bugs or bad performance are like this, or a bad configured system...

You may have just had a bad PSU, 550w should be fine for that setup. Good you got it sorted though.

yeah, I knew it was borderline when I bought the 5770, but Cliffs of Dover performs ok for me when compared to the complaints from people with much better systems, so I've been waiting for the patches and optimisation before upgrading hardware.

The psu has always been a worry though.

Think I'll get one tomorrow.:)

How's that going to happen?
Fry them due to the lack of power?

Many.

Anyone rated 80 PLUS.
Nice brands are OCZ, Corsair and Cooler Master.

If you got a tight hot case then buy a modular (i.e. you can remove unnecessary cables) but they are more expensive.

Read that you can atleast fry the PSU but never heard of anyone who did that.

Thanks mate. It's a Dell xps 8000, so quite a small case. Not worried about price really.

Well, not much.;)

A PSU that isn't up to the task is not going to give you very steady voltage, with dips and spikes whenever something power intensive happens (loading a game, a drive spinning up, fans kicking in, those 3 other cores revving up to full usage, etc.)

These dips and spikes put extra strain on your components and shorten their lifespan. I doubt a PSU is going to outright fry a component due to being too small, but it might make the difference between a GPU lasting your years or a week after the warranty runs out.

Also don't go with some no-name brand. Some of them are cheap, use really substandard components and CAN fry a system if they spike too high.

I check the 550 PSU and it was working like it should.
And CLoD was doing fine with it.

after adding the 500 PSU is when CLoD got good.:grin:

The PC is faster and CLod preforms and looks better.:grin:

The things is you must adjust your video card settings for the power supply.

I see that there are some that don't post there PSU. That is where it all starts. The PSU.

flyer01

I got curious. The distortion on the width of the videos are a product of youtube uploading mechanism or game config?

tityus

Dell XPS 8000; that's ATX format but I know Dell make tight stuff so to be 100% sure check the dimensions of the old PSU before getting a new one.

Corsair just released a nice PSU - AX650 for 169 USD. It's modular, 80+ Gold, apparently silent and in ATX format.

Thanks Venge, you're a star!:)

Thats the WMM settings I have to make a HD video.

:oops:

Thanks for the prompt reply. I don't have CloD yet and got a little worried about the distortion. Good thing it is intentional and not the game engine.

té mais
tityus

That is interesting, I didn't even think the gpu would work without enough juice. I went with PC power&cooling and my 750w silencer has been chugging along 24/7 for at least two years now.

dude you need to read this

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...review-test/11

5770 requires 500watt at the min. on a full load your 350 isnt enough for that card at all.

It is obviously a great wit, I've already done once with the old computers, but I do not think that by using two sources of food ganess performance in Flight Simulator, that I assure you, and less if they are of 500W and 550W respectively, if they were a good sources 1100w corsair or pulling some source cheaper but more w as the APEX NOX I'd say, "to your computer does not lack safe energy that is released with a lot of accessories but I doubt that you get you do more fluid game or Simulator this is responsible for the GPU not sources of food and as we all know the GPU have a minimum of consumption peaks and a few peaks of maximum so that with one single food source going sobrado provided that it is a good source..."Since generic fonts do not tend to give less than 70% of the real W...;)

850 W 80+ psu for my modest videocard

...and no sound problems in MP btw ))

I have two psu's and I never thought of this, both are 500W.
How do you recommend setting it up?


Should I just use one psu for mobo/cpu etc and the other for graphics or are there other ways to set it up?

ATI 6870 1gb
Q8400 cpu
4Gb DDR2

You can try different things. But I would for sure have the GPU and CPU on different PSU's.
I put 1 PSU on P1 and jumped the other P1 on the other PSU.

1 PSU's 12v male plug-in on the MOBO then the other male plug-in from the other PSU on the MOBO.

Your HD you connect to the PSU that you think will preform the best.
Then your CD/DVD player connect to your other PSU.

You can try different things to see what works the best with your HD and CD/DVD player.

After you set this up can turn up your setting on your Video card.

And your PC will be much faster. Mine is anyway.

Hope this helps.


Let us know how it works.

flyer01

Remember the good old days when the PSU was just some shiny thing in your case? Nobody ever paid attention to it. We just took it for granted.
That stopped when the Nvidia 6800 series came out, and suddenly PSU's were given proper attention.

I had a CM Stacker case (the original) that made provision for two PSU's in it's design, as well as the jumpers to kickstart the second PSU.
Man, that case was was years ahead of it's time.
Sadly, it's been surpassed by better cases now, but for it's day it was still an amazing case.

ohh, yeah!
And who gave a XXXX about cpu fans?

http://www.inet.se/files/img/max/5321868_2.png

Thanks Bludawg, I'm convinced.

Will be down to the shops in around 30 mins!

Cheers!:grin:

Geeze, so much BS in one single thread.

First, an underrated PSU can NOT fry your system. Just would lead to instabilities due to insufficent power. But no damage AT ALL.

Second, combining 2 ore more PSU can give some very bad differences in electrical potentials if you don't make a proper low ohm connection of their ground potentials.

Third, the recommended specs for video cards are mostly overdone, so that even the worst low cost psu with the given (paper) rating could handle them.

Forth, the recommended PSU brands (OCZ, Corsair and Cooler Master) don't even build psus at all, just rebranding them.

Corsair for example are just OEM seasonic (which itself is top notch, but the oem versions may vary) or channel well.

http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/psu_manufacturers


Fifth, even the idea that a GPU can do ANYTHING to performance is.. borderline to say it the least offending way.

How about if a PSU is being asked for more power than that for which it's rated (and capable), blows a bit that's channeling that excessive power and resistance plummets and allows a massive spike through to the mobo/card/whatever?

Not even to the PSU itself?

Eeeeehh, I'd like to see some docs on that cause you've got a hole world of OC:ers saying otherwise. Might be a hype but just to be sure, give us a link plz.

Common knowledge but I could not see any reason to post that info. But thank you for nothing.

Instead of being an a**hole give the OP some examples of good PSU.

No, hardly not. General overwattage is backed up by fuses, and genreally, if you overwatt one rails then you probaly get voltage drops on the other rails, causing instabilities.
The maximum wattage of the PCIe Slot itself is about 75 Watts, a 6 Pin PCIe Adaptor is rated for (aditional) 75Watts itself, whereas a 8 pin PCIe Connector can handle 150Watts max.

So even a 590Ti card with its 2 8 Pin PCIe connectors cannot draw more than a theoretical 2*150+1*75Watts=375 Watts theoretical limit that the power adaptors itself can safely handle.

The "needs a 550 Watt" psu recommendations are just a safe margin.
You can have scenerios where you draw more watts, say on the 12Volts rail of an psu than the psu can handle even as the complete watte of all rails itself isnt reached. Thus we get this rather high recommended (complete) wattage.
It was a pleasure :)
If saying the thruth is beeing an asshole in your view than.. call me one, no problem.
If you would have read my text you might have been able to get the "seasonic is a good brand" message, but maybe it was just hidden too deep. The wattage itself depends on the system you are running. But a single 4GHz Quadcore intel with some hdds/opical drives (that are in the sub 20 watts area, more like even under the sub 10 watts) and 1 or 2 GPUs is hardly asking for more than a good 550-650 Watt PSU. Even under spiking.

Thanks for the info Druid.. I only have a 600w PSU and hope that is going to suffice for now..

Congratulations!

Now we really reach a new level in placebo effect!

Another thing to think about is some cheaper psu have far less output than what they claim to have. Also cheaper units can have power surges that can at best crash a game and at worst wreck your computer. The power can drop then spike due to things like the fridge starting.
I am a novice at best when it comes to building computers so I did alot of research in every component. One thing I learnt in my latest build was the psu is as important as any other component. In fact most builders will tell you to use a psu much bigger than you need as chances are you will add components to your pc at a later time.

Well, I've been to the shops and the best I could do was a OCZ 700w off the shelf (patience was never one of my virtues).

Will fit it tonight and run some tests on the Black Death track and see about performance change.

I have plenty of Fraps benchmarks on file from the old psu, so I'll do some comparisons.

Having said that, it won't bother me if there's no change as I'll still need the Psu if I upgrade the card.

We shall see!:grin:

PSU must be able to maintain regulation under load, my recently replaced 750W dipped to 11.5V when launching missions in CoD and the GPU would not render correctly.

I tried it as an additional dedicated GPU supply but the rugulation is fubarred. The replacement coolmaster provides good steady 12V regualtion under load.

If you have two known good PSU's (and space to fit) I don't see why you shouldn't connect them in tandem to share load, just make sure that the common rails are tied together (usually most PSU's 0v is connected to the PSU casing and if both are bolted to the steel casing both PSU's should have a common ground 0v).

The only concern I would have are possible effects of having some 12V and 5V rails being present at slightly different times during switch on (unless you can get the mobo to switch both on at the same time).

Interesting thread.

There's more to a computer than a graphicscard and like someone smart said "The wattage itself depends on the system you are running."

Here's just an example of a site where one can check what type of PSU is needed.
http://www.raptoxx.com/calculator.php


I don't know but to my experience by having a good tone it's more likely that peeps listen to what you say.

You are more likely to find one of the brands I posted than a Seasonic. But I'll give it to you, u came with a suggestion...kinda.

Anyways, we both agree that a 80 plus 500W is sufficient for most systems.
The OP had 350W so can't hurt with his new 500 Corsair (or rebranded Seasonic if u like).


Btw, I hate multiquote! :-D

I don't mind your tone. People should be less sensitive about it but anyway...

Let's not fail to include the draw from USB when trying to figure out what one needs to power their system. Flight simmers tend to have quite a few USB devices all trying to get their juice as well.

"PC Power and Cooling" power supplies are the only ones I will use. They build industrial power supplies and hobby power supplies. They build them, not import them.

1+ And dare to try to convince him he is wrong.

Have to concur here.

Fitted new 700w OCZ psu from original Dell OE 350w psu.

Here are the Black Death Fraps results before and after, with identical ingame graphics settings and CCC preset.

Before -
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
4155, 212890, 6, 50, 19.517

After -
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
4130, 214891, 7, 50, 19.219

in-game AA off, card AA and anisotropic filter set to application controlled (so no AA at all then!)

Vertical refresh always off

All other card settings set to 'high performance'

SSAO off, V-Synch off, epilepsy off

All detail settings set to 'High', grass on, shadows on.


Ah well, at least I know I can upgrade the card now!:grin:

Finally someone who talks sense, i was amazed at what silly things some people were saying here, and actually others believing them.

Look here, this is an excellent article from a reputed hw site: Debunking Power Supply Myths. For those lacking time or patience, just read this:
++++++++++++++++++++++
System 3:
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850, 4GB Memory, NVIDIA 780i Chipset, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI, an optical drive, and four hard drives. For our third example, we chose some of the most demanding products for testing. In particular, the 780i Chipset from NVIDIA has the highest power consumption of all chipsets we've tested so far, drawing a constant 69W. (There is of course some variation in power consumption even from chips of the same family, and the features and extra chips on each motherboard differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. Our particular 780i is an EVGA motherboard.) The idle power consumption for this setup is around 310W, and once we place of full load on everything power consumption increases to 544W.
++++++++++++++++++++++

Grated it's an older article and therefor older components, however please note that this 3rd system is still a monster in power consumption terms and still comes shy of the 550W mark (that doesn't mean that a 550W source is recommended of course).

If anything nowadays the tedency in PSUs usage is gross oversizing, which leads to efficiency loss. And money loss. But hey, go ahead, use 10 PSUs if that's how smart you are, i'm sure you're going to notice vast improvement.

:rolleyes:

Duly noted.

But I had an 8800GTX, with a 530w Aopen PSU, and the rest of the system was the same as in my sig.
My PSU was taking strain, no doubt about it. It was runinng hot and the fan was spinning like mad. It didn't do that with my older 9800 Pro.
The PSU was about two years older than the card at the time, which might explain my problem, but there you have it. The system was not overclocked either.

Maybe someone can explain it?

I never upgraded my psu, on my new build, i just used my old Thermaltake Toughpower 750w, that i had form my last build
Question is,
Is this any good, now? or should i look at upgrading

People still discussing this surreal theme? "Performance and PSU"?

Maybe this explain why some can't run CloD right anyway... "Hardware limitation"...

Hey I am close to a large nuclear plant, this may explain the good performance of my PC !

I have run the TT and were always happy with them. I did have one finally die on me, and it did it the sneaky manner where it was doing the fluctuating voltage on one rail. I have a test bench so it was easy to pull it and test it put a load on it and see it was on its last legs.

I get a lot of problem PC's in the door and 9 times out of 10 its a very old, tired and completely dusted up PSU. Aside from the 'bugs' its the number one thing that does go wrong with PC's aside from the abuse from their owners.

Thanks for posting this.
I was going to get a 750w PSU before I though to try and use 2 PSU's.

Looks like I did the right thing.

All I can say is after using 2 PSU's 1 to the CPU and 1 to the GPU.
( I'v also have them wired to turn on and off at the same time)

My system is much faster and CLoD plays better with all setting on high then Med but BD
runs better on Very High then on Med or High.

I have also put a CB Ice cooler unit in the case.

What is a CB Ice cooler?

Its a unit that setts out side the PC. You put Ice and water in the cooler.

There is a pump that pushes ice cold water through a inlet hose to a cooling pad and returns the water back through a outlet hose back to the Ice cooler.

The hoses are insulated.

I have the cooling pad covering the GPU to keep it cool. and the rest of the pad on the MOBO cooler and on the CPU.

Now when I put my hand on the back of the PC Fan, the air stays cool while flying CLoD.

I have 2 of the Ice coolers with pumps and hose from different operations that required them for pain relief.

This also works great.

The whay I have the PSU,s and Ice cooler makes my system and CLod play much better on High and Very High setting.:grin:

And thats all I need to know. LOL

If this helps someone then Great.


Good landings,

flyer01

InsaneDruid:
"Geeze, so much BS in one single thread."

Korn:
"i was amazed at what silly things some people were saying here, and actually others believing them"

What's with people's attitude these days? :confused:

Guess we can send Dutch_851's old Dell 350W PSU to either of you guys and you'd happily use it in your rig. :grin:
But you'd probably don't wanna swap your >500W, huh!?


I'd be suprised if a PSU had any effect on FPS. However, a gaming computer with shitload of heffy stuff will not run on 350W in all.
So all is well at the end of the day cause Dutch_851 got leverage to upgrade and add other componets if needed, plus that perhaps his 80 plus might save him some on his electrical bill (just speculating, u do the math if u want).

I suspect in my case (similar to you) when I upgraded from a GTS250 to the GTX560ti my 750W PSU suffered overheating and the fan full bore after a few minutes of CloD. It seemed Ok with the GTS250. I replaced the 750w with a Coolermaster 600W with an identical 12V power ratings of 480W. Having stripped the 750W and tested it on a bench the main difference compared to the Coolermaster is the Heatsink size. The Coolermaster has a much larger heatsink and different alloy composition. The fan in most PSU's is controlled by Heatsink temperature. The smaller heatsink on my 750W must have been dissipating more heat with the GTX560ti in full bore and the fan rpm increasing to compensate.

When I tested the 750W under load it couldn't regulate the 12V supply and the voltage was fluctuating possibly due to prolonged use at high temperatures or a just poor PSU by design.

I'm in the market for a PSU and this article I found interesting. I'm replacing my multi rail unit.:grin:

"Lines are being drawn in the power supply war. On one side, we have vendors such as Tagan pushing “multi-rail” designs on its big 1KW+ PSUs. On the other side we have PC Power and Cooling which is pushing a single-rail design 1 Kilo Watt model.
If you think of each of these rails as its own power plant, a multi- or split-rail design breaks up the power among multiple power plants. So, on Tagan’s TurboJet TG1100-U95, you get four power plants, each capable of producing 20 amps of 12 volt power or 240 watts per rail for a total of 960 watts. PC Power and Cooling single-rail Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR features 72 amps of 12 volt or 864 watts continuous and can peak at 960 amps all one single rail.
Which design philosophy is better? I won’t draw any conclusions here but I can give you each side’s spin on the issue.
First up is Tagan, which argues that it’s about death and following the rules. A multi-rail design, the company says, is much safer and some international safety organizations don’t allow you to output more than 20 amps per rail. More than that, the company tells me, it could possibly kill you.
Tagan also says a multi-rail design complies with the EPS12V spec which everyone agrees to follow. If hardware vendors follow the EPS12V specifications for power requirements, they shouldn’t violate an EPS12V PSU.
As the sole PSU vendor pushing a single rail design for big PSU’s, PC Power and Cooling’s argument is quite intriguing. Even though the company once also pushed a multi/split rail design, the company has since decided that the single rail is the future.
The problem with multi-rails, the company says, is that power tends to get stuck on the individual rails. If the PSU, for example, allocates 36 amps of power from rail 1 and 2 to the CPU but the processors only consume 22 amps – the rest cannot be reallocated to the GPU or hard drive array. With a single-rail design, if the CPUs only use 22 amps of juice, the rest can be sent to the GPUs or whatever else needs the 12 volt power because it all comes from a single bucket of power.
As for spec’s, PC Power said the spec’s were written in the days when CPU power consumption was a runaway freight train. With Intel and AMD pushing low power chips, locking up X amount of amps for CPUs that will get used is the wrong way to do it. As far as safety goes, PC Power says it has certifications from UL and other international test labs that say it’s kosher.
The practical upshot, if both have done their homework on their PSU designs, is both will work. I think the single-rail certainly sounds more efficient with its send power where it’s needed outlook. But multi-rail designs should and have worked as well up to this point"

click the link in my sig for the PSU, 2000 people cant be wrong :)

A friend of mine said it short and sweet after I told him about putting 2 PSU's on the PC.

"Having to use two PSU's tells me that your original PSU was of insufficient amperage to run your system. It's an ingenious way to provide the needed power if you have a spare PSU lying around."

How-to-Discover-Your-Power-Supplys-Real-Manufacturer

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-oem,2729.html

Wow, I wouldnt buy anything under 800w for a modern gaming rig, I have a 1600w one in atm but its set to 1200w. But there is absolutely no reason to go for 2 PSU over 1 higher capacity PSU.

The reason I went with 2 PSU's is I already had a 500 watt to put on the PC. What it did was add 500 more watts to my PC.
Instead of have just 550 watts. I now have 1055 watts.

I would not have went to the store and bought a 500 watt PSU's to put on the PC.

The main point of this thread was to let people know that you can put 2 PSU's on your PC. And how.

Lets say you get a new GPU and have to upgrade your PSU. The GPU say's that the MIN is 550 watts for your new GPU. So, to save some money you get the 550 watt at less the $100 knowing that you already have, lets say 300 watt at home.

You add the new GPU and the 550 watt PSU with your 300 watt GPU.

Doing so gives you 850 watts. But you only had to buy 550 watts to upgrade you GPU.
The 850 watt would have cost around $143+ savings of $43 + tax. (Prices my vary)

We all know by now that CLoD is going to take a high end GPU to run the best.
The more power the GPU has to draw from the better.

flyer01