Question PC severely underperforming

dadus33

Honorable
Jul 9, 2014
54
0
10,530
Specs:
PSU: Deepcool DA700 700W
CPU: i7 4790K
RAM: 16GB DDR3 @ 1600 (dual channel 2x 8)
MOBO: MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition
GPU: GTX 1080
STORAGE: WDC WDS200T2B0B 2TB (M.2 SSD)

It's been over a year since my last upgrade on this PC and everything seemed to be fine. Unfortunately I didn't take any benchmarks or anything, and I wasn't playing very intensive games back then, the most intensive one being probably PUBG. Recently I bought a 144Hz monitor and being interested in the framerate I got, I realized not even in games like PUBG it wouldn't go beyond about 80 in normal conditions. I also started playing games which are apparently more demanding (hint: they are all made in UE4) like Jedi Fallen Order, Squad, or insurgency sandstorm, in which i all have terrible frames, in the 40s.
As for the possible issues, I made sure the PC is as dust-free as possible, and can confirm temps are far from an issue. I ran some benchmarks as well, with userbenchmark, passmark and furmark. Most of the components seem to be running fine, with the exception of the GPU, which seems to be performing at almost half of that it should be, judging from other people's scores.

I have a slight idea of why this might be, but I'm not sure if this is the case. I've monitored the voltages on the mobo and noticed that the 12v rail never actually reaches 12v. It maxes at 11.8 but usually sits at 11.7 when the PC is literally idling. When playing games, it gets as low as 11.2 and sometimes I even saw it go bellow 11, at even 10.8. My guess is this isn't normal, giving that from what i've read online so far the very minimum should be around 11.6, but still, could this justify the GPU's severe performance drop? And if so, how can I know if it's the mobo or the PSU? The readings above are from the sensors on the mobo, is there any way I can check the PSU without specialized equipment?
 
Last edited:

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
It's tricky; a PSU doesn't typically cause underperforming and software's really awful for voltage readings. But it's also a quite a low-quality PSU to be pairing with a GTX 1080, though better than some of Deepcool's offerings (it's not a company with a history of excellent PSUs). My inclination would be to replace the PSU first and revisit what's going on.
 

dadus33

Honorable
Jul 9, 2014
54
0
10,530
It's tricky; a PSU doesn't typically cause underperforming and software's really awful for voltage readings. But it's also a quite a low-quality PSU to be pairing with a GTX 1080, though better than some of Deepcool's offerings (it's not a company with a history of excellent PSUs). My inclination would be to replace the PSU first and revisit what's going on.
Thank you. I'll try to replace it and report back.