If I were to use a 500W power supply with a video card that needed a minimum of 550W, what would happen?

[zoruru1]

So recently my computer has been shutting off and restarting while playing certain games. I've been trying to figure out the problem and that's when I noticed my video card box required a minimum of 550W while my power supply is, you guessed it, 500W. Will there be any permanent problem left behind? I'm planning on getting a more powerful power supply and I've been using this power supply for about a year to two.

 

[N3rdR4ge]

When something is hogging the power and there is not enough something else that needs it can fail. Most likely it will not damage your system at all. The issues you are describing could definitely be caused by this. I wouldn't worry about it. Just upgrade when you can. Most likely your system will just freeze, shut down or get a blue screen at worst.

 

[datguy20]

Those are recommended wattages, not the actual power pulled from the card. To figure out the general amount your PC will actually use, put all your parts into a pcpartpicker.com list and it will give you a wattage estimate. Try to shoot for +50W extra of the estimate if you want to cover variances. If you'll be overclocking you might need +100W to be safe. The best way to know is look up power consumption of the CPU and GPU, add it together and see what you need.

As for the permanent damage, no idea. I would say no if it's just not getting enough power, but if it's somehow being overloaded then maybe? Not my strongest area of knowledge.

 

[mrmez]

It's all about the brand. A top quality 500w should be ok with a 550w recommended card.
On the other hand, a rubbish 600w might struggle with 500w.

Pushing a PSU hard will dramatically reduce it's life. Heat kills everything, including capacitors which lose efficiency with age. Push a cheap PSU hard for 2 years and you could lose 20%.

I've had multiple cheap PSU's die in our office computers after less than 2 years, and a great one flogged for 6 years in my gaming rig, still going hard.

 

[dudio]

If it's a half decent quality PSU (what make is it?) then shut downs are likely
the worse you'll experience. If it's a lower end/bargain brand power supply,
there's a chance it will fail horribly and take out valuable components with it

 

[tsnor]

A $15 'kill-a-watt' meter will tell you that at the wall you are no where near to 500W at the wall. If you post your system config we can add up the max wattage and confirm that.

A bad/failing PSU can behave exactly the way you describe. "..shutting off and restarting while playing certain games...", so can software problems with the driver stack and problem with the video card and memory problems. Do you see any events recorded in windows event log ?

Do this: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/automatic-restart-windows-7.htm Disable the Automatic Restart on System Failure

Video card makers WAY OVERCONFIGURE their power supply requirements because there are so many BAD PSUs out there that claim 450W and deliver 250W stable, 300W dirty and nothing above that. As said by many people already, any reasonable (not even great, just reasonable) 500W PSU will power a 550W recommended video card no problem.

Cross check, the max power your video card can get is 75W from the MB pcie slot, and another 75 for each 6-pin connector and another 150 for each 8-pin connector. Add them up. Bet you are at 150or 225W max for the video card. Then add another 150 for CPU + MB and thats your max power. (Some overclocked AMD cpus will draw more).

Debugging: Turn off all overclocks for CPU. Then turn off overclock if any for video card. Are you now stable? Yes- OC is too high. No- next step is to Underclock the video card by 20%. Stable - yes then it's likely video card or PSU. Not stable, run memory tests and consider software problems. Say what you are doing and what happens if you start debugging to get better next steps.

Please post your PSU maker (or say OEM for Dell, etc)
Video card(s) and CPU
and anything else that might draw a lot of power during gaming (unlikley, but if you were also powering up a spinning disk raid array when it failed that would be good to know).

 

[johnf03]

You will experience unwanted shutdown without notice. And other than that, your PC Components will be damaged and reducing its lifespan. For solution, buy a bigger PSU. A bigger and better PSU is recommended because PC components are very expensive in power usage. So, a better PSU is also good if you want to future-proof and upgrade your components without replacing your PSU for a long time.

 

[zoruru1]

I use a CorsairCX500