Bad PSU Making My PC Shut Down

[Sug]

I only have a 500w PSU which is causing my PC to shut down when playing some games, understandably Cyberpunk shuts down after 5 minutes or so but I have to wait a couple weeks before I buy a better PSU. Unfortunately the Witcher 3 shuts down even on medium graphics after and hour or two. Is there any way to limit power consumption or do I just have to wait to upgrade?

[Sug]

Publicado originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

Publicado originalmente por Sug:

Well my PC doesn't completely shut down or restart, my ram RGB and my hard drive light stays on, but my mouse, keyboard monitor etc. turn off and I have to switch off and on my power supply to turn my pc back on. I tried undervolting and it hasn't crashed after playing for like 3 hours straight.

That complicates it.

If the cause was with the PSU (such as lack of wattage or some limit being tripped) or if it was thermals, I would expect that it would more likely result in an immediate shutdown instead of a freeze or restart. So for now, I'd isolate your focus to the new parts (graphics card and RAM) and try to rule them out before assuming the PSU.

This sounds more like it may be a MCE. I'd guess there's a stability issue with your new RAM or graphics card. Either one of them is outright faulty, or at least not stable at the settings you were attempting before.

I just made sure everything is slotted in properly, afterburner is saying my memory is taking up 8500mhz which seems pretty huge... i am not sure if that is normal or not.

[_I_]

that probably the gpu memory (vram)
not system ram
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-4060.c4107

it should be 2125mhz, some reason its showing x4 since its a form of ddr and 128bit (2 x 64bit) bandwdith

use gpuz to see the gpu specs and what its running at

[BurakZG]

When choosing a PSU it is more important to choose a good quality one than one with more Watts. Yours (ANTEC) is rated bad in tierlist (that's not yet a reason to replace it).
It's very hard to guess what is cousing your problems, but PSU is still on the list. You mounted a new GPU which is not very power hungry but it will couse peaks in power use. If your PSU has bad quality capacitors (especially they are not new anymore) it might couse voltage drops below acceptable levels and then all strange things can happen in your system. By messing up with system settings (like undervolting) you are actually adding more instability to your system, and you are not helping yourself to find out the couse of the problem. Good luck!

[ˢᵈˣ FatCat]

i really hate blackscreen crash with no error i pressume right? maybe we should undervolt the gpu, and power limit, if still crash we can say it's not power issue
i saw youtuber , testing a 850 can draw till 930ish then tottaly shutdown * but dont quote me
how about just put one RAM, see how it goes

[Sug]

Publicado originalmente por ˢᵈˣ FatCat:

i really hate blackscreen crash with no error i pressume right? maybe we should undervolt the gpu, and power limit, if still crash we can say it's not power issue
i saw youtuber , testing a 850 can draw till 930ish then tottaly shutdown * but dont quote me
how about just put one RAM, see how it goes

I will try use 1 ram, it is x2 32 GB sticks. The base PC came with x1 8GB stick. and yes super frustrating.

[Sug]

Publicado originalmente por BurakZG:

When choosing a PSU it is more important to choose a good quality one than one with more Watts. Yours (ANTEC) is rated bad in tierlist (that's not yet a reason to replace it).
It's very hard to guess what is cousing your problems, but PSU is still on the list. You mounted a new GPU which is not very power hungry but it will couse peaks in power use. If your PSU has bad quality capacitors (especially they are not new anymore) it might couse voltage drops below acceptable levels and then all strange things can happen in your system. By messing up with system settings (like undervolting) you are actually adding more instability to your system, and you are not helping yourself to find out the couse of the problem. Good luck!

Yeah PSU is very old

[BurakZG]

If your PSU is not fit to support your PC, there's in no amount of magic you do with other components to fix the problem. Problems with PSU occur when there is a peak in use. The total amount of Watt is OK in your system. No matter what you do peaks will happen anyway.

If you suspect RAM, then run Memtest86. Really, stop messing up. Run the test. If it passes you can forget about RAM, If it fails you need to change settings in BIOS and try again.

[Set-115689]

Can limit cpu power in the bios. Set PL2 (turbo power) to a low upper limit. Will be called different things for different mainboards. Or can just disable turbo.

Can limit gpu power in msi afterburner.

You pc is already pretty low power. Gpu might consume the most power. Lowering gpu power limit in msi afterburner might also decrease cpu usage/power draw.

[Monk]

His system isn't pulling anywhere near 500w, so either stuff isn't plugged in properly or something is faulty.

As it seems to be time based and OP upgraded stuff, did he change the cooler, and have you remembered to remove the plastic? Might just be shutting down due to thermals, not noticed any mention of temps.

[Sug]

Well thanks for the help everyone, I upgraded to an 850w and my pc is running smooth as hell. For those who said it wasn't the PSU, I guess it was one of those rare moments.

[Monk]

Out of curiosity, did you ever check everything was fully plugged in before swapping psu?

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

Power supplies are seemingly more prone to failure these days as with new, modern car batteries → I blame Quality Control and Assurance.

Technology is unsustainable.

[ᶻ𝗓𐰁]

Publicado originalmente por Sug:

Well thanks for the help everyone, I upgraded to an 850w and my pc is running smooth as hell. For those who said it wasn't the PSU, I guess it was one of those rare moments.

That's great, 500w is simply not enough for those specs, you really needed 650w but 850w gives you a nice amount of overhead for future upgrades.

[Monk]

Publicado originalmente por ᶻ𝗓𐰁:

Publicado originalmente por Sug:

Well thanks for the help everyone, I upgraded to an 850w and my pc is running smooth as hell. For those who said it wasn't the PSU, I guess it was one of those rare moments.

That's great, 500w is simply not enough for those specs, you really needed 650w but 850w gives you a nice amount of overhead for future upgrades.

Their system is pulling around 300-350w maxed out.

Their issue was not a lack of power, a fault perhaps, most likely a cable not fully inserted though.

[Jimux]

I've recently started to have black screen crashes whilst playing and haven't touched my system for at least a year...
Thought it was an update for Kingdom Come 2 but just happened with Avowed.

Might have been the GPU drivers (6800XT) but have been reading several threads on users with NVIDIA cards having the same issue.... so maybe a windows update has borked something.?