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We need a getting started guide for PSU's


El_Capitan

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I have a co-worker who built his own computer for $700 buying parts from Newegg. From talking, he said it had an i3 CPU, 500W power supply, and a R9 270X graphics card. He said it was mostly for playing StarCraft 2, League of Legends, and other games. He could have gotten a lot better system for the money, and StarCraft 2 utilizes the CPU quite a bit.

 

Anyways, he's been having big framerate drops, so he came to ask me some questions. At any rate, yada yada yada, I traded a Gigabyte Windforce HD 7970 for his R8 270X for free (yeah, I'm nice like that).

 

At any rate, at that time, I found out that he was only using a molex to 6-pin adapter for his graphics card. He said there were no PCIE cables on the PSU. I'm like, wut? My talks about the whole situation went over his head. He went home, and used a single molex to 8-pin adapter for the HD 7970 (which has an 8-pin and a 6-pin) and said he experienced the same issue...

 

... after another lengthy discussion dumbing it down, I think he finally understands what he's doing wrong. Methinks it's time for a PSU guide so I don't have to spend time talking about it with deer in the headlights looks from the people I'm talking to.

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Power supplies rarely cause performance issues. Stability? Sure...but I've never seen frame rate drops from a crappy PSU.

It wasn't because of the PSU, but that he was connecting only a 6-pin for a two 6-pin graphics card for the R9 270X, and that 6-pin was coming from a molex adapter. He wasn't using any of the PCIE connector's because he couldn't see any. He had a Corsair CX500M, which has 1 modular PCIE and 3 modular Molex/SATA connectors.

 

What he needed to do was plug in the PCIE connector, and plug it into one 6-pin (or the 8-pin on the HD 7970), and then use the Molex to 6-pin adapter to plug into the other 6-pin on the graphics card.

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Wow, so he was only using the 8pin of the 7970 and nothing for the 6pin???

 

I didn't think it would even power up like that, and if it did it would be horribly underpowered.

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