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Should I upgrade my power supply?

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First post, by DeadnightWarrior

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Hi all,
I'm having a lot of trouble getting my current retro rig to even install an OS.
I recently got an AsRock 775i65G 2.0 for a very good price.
Around the same time, I acquired an Intel Core2Quad Q6600 and a GeForce 6600GT AGP, both for pennies (the CPU was 6.5€ shipped and the GPU was 15€ shipped!).

Basically my retro project is nothing more than a hobby to kill time, so I try to spend as less money as I can on it. That's why I have a very, very basic case that came with an included "chinese crap" PSU (this one).

Keep in mind that this PSU could easily handle an Athlon 64 2800+, a Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M motherboard, a Radeon 9600 Pro or a GeForce FX5600, a PCI sound card, a DVD drive and an SSD.

Since I rebuilt the system around the 775i65G I started having trouble.
Truth be told, I began trying an old Pentium D 950 paired with the GeForce FX5600 I had lying around and it seemed to work fine, got Windows 98SE installed and everything looked OK.
Except under Win98SE the video card seems unable to display any kind of widescreen resolution, but that's another story...

Then I put the Q6600 which was correctly detected, even if I still have to upgrade to the latest BIOS version (what I have now is version 3.00) and swapped the FX5600 with the 6600GT: I never got to complete an OS installation.
The system would freeze at boot, sometimes not even displaying anything and I'd be forced to clear CMOS and start over. This happened a dozen times more or less.
I never even managed to get the BIOS updated.

As the 6600GT does need external power via a molex connector, I started thinking maybe my power supply was not keeping up with it. Though googling a bit I found someone saying that the card needs 18A on the 12+V rail and my PSU should theoretically be able to output 26A...

So I kept the CPU and put the FX5600, that does NOT require external power, back but I'm having the same issues. A bit less than before but still the same issues.

Please note: even though I have a cheap CPU cooler, I had absolutely no indication of overheating. Also, I'd really like to keep the quad core as this system is meant to triple boot Win98SE, WinXP and some kind of Linux distro. That's why I'd want to have more than a single core CPU: with XP, the Athlon 64 2800+ I had before would be constantly pegged to 100% usage, seriously slowing even the most basic tasks.

All that being said, which of the following parts could be the primary cause for my problems: CPU, PSU, GPU or mainboard?

Thanks for any suggestions you might have!

Last edited by DeadnightWarrior on 2021-03-06, 14:14. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 5, by dionb

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If you had the 130W TDP D 950 running stable but not the 105W TDP Q6600, I'd not be looking to your PSU as biggest cause of problems.

That said, this PSU is suspect: no pics of inside available, no reviews on independent review sites. I'd take any claims made on the label with a pinch of salt.

Although I'd recommend a reputable PSU in any system, here I'd look at other stuff first. If you sometimes can't even POST, the problem is pretty fundamental. I'd recommend runing Memtest86+ overnight for starters to rule out memory issues (dead DIMMs, bad settings or compatibility issues). Then I'd check for BIOS updates. If neither show any issues, it might be time to try (at leat temporarily) with a better PSU.

Reply 2 of 5, by DeadnightWarrior

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dionb wrote on 2021-03-06, 14:01:

If you had the 130W TDP D 950 running stable but not the 105W TDP Q6600, I'd not be looking to your PSU as biggest cause of problems.

That said, this PSU is suspect: no pics of inside available, no reviews on independent review sites. I'd take any claims made on the label with a pinch of salt.

Although I'd recommend a reputable PSU in any system, here I'd look at other stuff first. If you sometimes can't even POST, the problem is pretty fundamental. I'd recommend runing Memtest86+ overnight for starters to rule out memory issues (dead DIMMs, bad settings or compatibility issues). Then I'd check for BIOS updates. If neither show any issues, it might be time to try (at leat temporarily) with a better PSU.

RAM... that's what I didn't think about. Now that you mentioned it, three or four times the PC would power on and immediately emit a continuous and seemingly endless loop of short beeps: isn't that a RAM related issue?
BTW I'm currently using only one of two 1Gb sticks in order to be able to install Win98SE properly. Trying the other stick right now, let's see what happens...

Reply 3 of 5, by DeadnightWarrior

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Guess what, it might very well be a RAM issue: as soon as I swapped the one stick I was using, the system basically never froze again, even with the 6600GT plugged in.
Fingers crossed!

Reply 4 of 5, by ODwilly

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That is really thin gauge wire, and I cant even clearly read the label or even brand name. Id def check the voltages on that psu after you replace or fix the ram. My step-brother had a similar weird stability issue on his ddr3 amd rig due to just bad ram voltage settings. It would sometimes take a long while to boot, and after hours of usage would randomly soft crash. Then it just wouldnt boot to the bios.
Swapped everything to the highest voltage between the pair and the looser timings at the same speed and its now rock solid at 1600mhz.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 5 of 5, by DeadnightWarrior

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ODwilly wrote on 2021-03-09, 04:18:

My step-brother had a similar weird stability issue on his ddr3 amd rig due to just bad ram voltage settings. It would sometimes take a long while to boot, and after hours of usage would randomly soft crash. Then it just wouldnt boot to the bios.
Swapped everything to the highest voltage between the pair and the looser timings at the same speed and its now rock solid at 1600mhz.

If it's worth anything, I enabled the "Flexibility Option" in the BIOS (which is now upgraded to the latest 3.30 version): the manual says it "will allow better tolerance for memory compatibility".
As for the other CPU and RAM settings, everything is set to "Auto", RAM frequency and timings are managed by SPD and so on. Intel Speedstep and thermal throttling are both enabled.
I tried to choose the safest settings without compromising performance but also without looking for any kind of overclock or out of spec operation.
I hope it will work fine...

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