430W PSU vs 500W System

KamiAyJay

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Jan 3, 2017
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Recently I replaced my faulty R7 260X with a basically brand new MSI R9 270X.

The upgrade looks great and I have received a small but well noticed bump up in my Gaming performance, I have a Core i7 3770K running at 4.2GHZ and the "new" GPU has been overclocked to 1180Mhz Core Clock and a Memory Clock of 1550. + Extras like 16GB of Ram, SSD, 7200RPM HDD, Fans, LED's ETC...

Here's the problem...

My PSU is a Corsair CX430M rated at you guessed it, 430W, and as per Cooler Master: Power Supply Calculator, My system is currently rated at just under 500W.

So far my entire system is running all the overclocks as well as everything else completely "STABLE" or so I think. No bad smells from the PSU, No signs of Overheating, and all this while running a 20 minute CPU and GPU Stress test at the same time. This applies for long hours of gaming too.

Question is will the PSU hold out?

How bad could this fail if I did not dial back the overclocks?

And besides the overclocks... Is a PSU upgrade imperative at the moment?

TIA.

System Specs:

CPU: Core i7 3770K @ 4.2Ghz.
Motherboard: MSI Z77A - G43.
Ram: 16GB Corsair DDR3 1866Mhz.
SSD/HDD: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD / Seagate Baracuda 7200RPM HDD.
GPU: MSI Radeon R9 270X 2GB.
PSU: Corsair CX430M
Chassis: Chenbro Gaming Bomb 2.
OS: MS Windows 10 64.

 
Solution
Your graphics card, by itself is drawing at max 225w. 75 from the pcie slot, and 75w from each 6 pin connector.
Your I7-3770K has a thermal design point of 77w.

Still plenty of room.
When posting a thread of troubleshooting/suggestions nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs as:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:

I doubt the PSU will hold out. In fact it's not even a reliable unit to get a hold of inspite of being cheap. Yes a PSU change would be in my books as a first. You should pick out a unit that is reliable and as close to tier 1 as possible. + For further reading.
 
Your card requires two 6 pin pcie aux power adapters of 75w each.
Your psu includes only one 6+2 pin adapter, but that is capable of delivering 150w.
So. you needed to use a molex to 6 pin adapter to get this to work.
So far... OK.

The danger with a cheap underpowered psu is that if it should fail under load, there ais not sufficient protective circuitry to protect the rest of your parts from damage.

In the case of corsair, it is an inexpensive psu that is prone to failure.
But, it should have adequate protective circuitry.

The rest of your parts are not overly power hungry.

You could continue as is. Make certain that your psu gets adequate fresh air for cooling.

I think I would plan on a cpu change,, sooner or later you will want a stronger graphics card.
Seasonic S12II at 520 or 620w seems to be on sale now and it is a good quality tier 2 unit.
 
I am using a 2 Molex to 6pin PCIe adapter for the card alongside the 6pin from the psu. The thing that gets me is that the PSU should be overloaded yet it seems to be holding out just fine... Strange???

I do plan on upgrading the PSU within the next month or two... but I really need to know if this will hold out for the time being (about two more months).

Do you think that if i just dial back all my overclocks it will hold for say 2 months???
 

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