Some general PC questions...

[Newbie12]

there seems to be a 20/24 pin power connector for the motherboard, and an additional 4 pin power connector for the CPU - those are pretty standard, except that some of the higher-end motherboards will have a 8 pin cpu power connector instead

I can't seem to find any nice detailed pictures of that to tell you more accurately

Look at the attachment...

 

[Slapshot136]

that looks like a regular molex connector, probably intended for a fan?

 

[Newbie12]

that looks like a regular molex connector, probably intended for a fan?

Why intended for a fan if you have them 3-pin fan connectors on motherboards? Besides the psu has its own set of molex connector and an ordinary fan can use that.

Could it be that this could give the mainboard that extra little boost in power?

 

[Newbie12]

Hard drives can be corrupted by reasons other than the seal being breached, and as I said the entire drive would likely have been lost, but if you insist then by all means blame air.

You were possibly right, I apologies for my arrogance and ignorance towards the subject; even the change of HDD, the symptom still exist - PC froze, mouse still moves... Right atleast CPU usuage isn't at max before this happen and this only happens when I extract a specific WinRAR file and it somtimes also does it unexpectedly... I suppose you were right that it wasn't the HDD unless this HDD also had some "problems" with it too...

Could it be that this could give the mainboard that extra little boost in power?

Did I answer that question?

So what is the advantage of this? Are there also any disadvantages? How can one tell if single rail or multiple rails?

???

 

[Slapshot136]

Why intended for a fan if you have them 3-pin fan connectors on motherboards?

because different fans have different connectors.. there are plenty of molex powered fans

Besides the psu has its own set of molex connector and an ordinary fan can use that.

but if the motherboard powers it, it will be able to regulate the voltage (speed/noise of the fan) and read how fast it's spinning as well

Could it be that this could give the mainboard that extra little boost in power?

it's not a power input, it's a output

short answer: multiple rails don't matter until you get into systems with multiple high-end (and/or power hungry) graphic cards

 

[Newbie12]

but if the motherboard powers it, it will be able to regulate the voltage (speed/noise of the fan) and read how fast it's spinning as well

Yes but that what the yellow wire is for in a 3wired fan power connector.. In a molex power connector, the yellow is the +12v, Blacks is ground and Red is +5v. That leaves no free wires for control of fan... unless one of the black wire's it, or the red is the +12v, Black = ground and yellow is the control wire...

it's not a power input, it's a output

Really? interesting...

short answer: multiple rails don't matter until you get into systems with multiple high-end (and/or power hungry) graphic cards

So if you got two power hungry GPUs, two rails would do good. If you only got one, only one rail is needed? Same as if you got three or four, three or four rails are needed, repectively, right? And two rails or more wouldn't make a difference if you only have one power hungry GPU? and one rail would make a difference if you have two or more GPUs in that it degrades performance?

 

[Slapshot136]

just because 2 things do the same thing isn't reason enough to eliminate one, otherwise why would we have usb a/b, micro a/b, etc.

here is a post from jonnyGURU explaining multiple rails

 

[Newbie12]

here is a post from jonnyGURU explaining multiple rails

Wow, thanks!:thup: Okay, I don't want to feel dumb, but a PSU supplying two rails of +12v at 20A is the same as another supplying one rail of +12v at 40A in power output? If that's true, then me buying a GPU that requires atleast a +12v rail at 35A would do good on either the dual railed one or the single railed one(since 2x20A also equals 40A and is 5A over the required amount and therefore should still good)? Or am I suppose to get a PSU rating two rails at 40A, giving, if single railed, equals a total of 80A so that it would suffice the power requirements of that GPU?

You were possibly right, I apologies for my arrogance and ignorance towards the subject; even the change of HDD, the symptom still exist - PC froze, mouse still moves... Right atleast CPU usuage isn't at max before this happen and this only happens when I extract a specific WinRAR file and it somtimes also does it unexpectedly... I suppose you were right that it wasn't the HDD unless this HDD also had some "problems" with it too...

Hmmm, I hope I didn't zap specific parts of the main board that might of caused this...

 

[Varine]

No, it wouldn't really be the same. I'm assuming you don't know much about electronics, so I'll explain the basics: amps are the amount of power being put through; voltage is like the pressure behind the amps. So with a single +12v rail at 40 amps would effectively provide the same amount of power as two +12v rails at 20 amps, it won't have the same amount of pressure pushing behind it as having two rails. Hardware isn't really my thing so Slapshot might be able to tell you more about it in relation to the computer power, but that I think that's about the basics.

A single +12v 40A should suffice I think, but you also need to look at the rest of the power being consumed.

Also, you said that your computer freezes primarily when you're un-archiving files? Can you tell me the settings you have the program running at for it (tell me the program if you don't know how to check. Like is is 7zip or WinRAR)? Your memory usage might also have spiked; or your CPU is getting really hot and is freezing for a moment. When they get old they start doing weird things sometimes, you might want to check the thermal paste on the heatsink.

 

[Slapshot136]

generally each rail is supposed to have no more then 20A for safety reasons, as 20 x 12 = 240 watts, which is enough for even the most power-hungry graphics cards - generally any claim that a graphics card "requires" this many amps is more of an estimate that includes the rest of the system as well. (so add up the total current that can be distributed on all the rails simultaneously) - the 6/8 pin power connectors that graphic cards use are limited to 75W each, so even if you have 3 of them on 1 rail, it won't put it over the limit, and graphic cards only use 2 of those at max per card - now it's cheaper to manufacture single rail PSU's, and if they can convince you with marketing that single rails are better, they end up with more profit. now at a 300W PSU (like yours), there is no reason to have multiple rails, since it only has 300W max, and it also needs to provide power to the 5V components

next, for your spiking issue, have you tried running memtest86 or similar? (burn it to a CD and boot up off of it to eliminate windows/driver issues from the causes), and let it run overnight

 

[Newbie12]

No, it wouldn't really be the same. I'm assuming you don't know much about electronics, so I'll explain the basics: amps are the amount of power being put through; voltage is like the pressure behind the amps. So with a single +12v rail at 40 amps would effectively provide the same amount of power as two +12v rails at 20 amps, it won't have the same amount of pressure pushing behind it as having two rails. Hardware isn't really my thing so Slapshot might be able to tell you more about it in relation to the computer power, but that I think that's about the basics.

Oh, thanks for that clarification.:thup:

A single +12v 40A should suffice I think, but you also need to look at the rest of the power being consumed.

Of course it should, because the GPU only requires 35A at +12v...

Also, you said that your computer freezes primarily when you're un-archiving files? Can you tell me the settings you have the program running at for it (tell me the program if you don't know how to check. Like is is 7zip or WinRAR)? Your memory usage might also have spiked; or your CPU is getting really hot and is freezing for a moment. When they get old they start doing weird things sometimes, you might want to check the thermal paste on the heatsink.

I was using WinRAR. WinRAR shouldn't take that much RAM. Uh, how old would a CPU be to do such weird things?

next, for your spiking issue, have you tried running memtest86 or similar? (burn it to a CD and boot up off of it to eliminate windows/driver issues from the causes), and let it run overnight

yes, I used that and it says it passed all the tests...

generally each rail is supposed to have no more then 20A for safety reasons, as 20 x 12 = 240 watts, which is enough for even the most power-hungry graphics cards

Really? Well then, what should I think of when I see a PSU that rates one +12v rail at 90A? Or is this generally only for PSUs with two or more rails of +12v?

- generally any claim that a graphics card "requires" this many amps is more of an estimate that includes the rest of the system as well. (so add up the total current that can be distributed on all the rails simultaneously)

How do you do that? I'm sort of lost on this one...

 

[Slapshot136]

Really? Well then, what should I think of when I see a PSU that rates one +12v rail at 90A? Or is this generally only for PSUs with two or more rails of +12v?

avoid it like the plague

no graphics card will consume 35A at 12v, the 6 pin pcie connector provides 75W the 8 pin 150W, added together that's 225, under 240

Of course it should, because the GPU only requires 35A at +12v...

this is wrong. no GPU consumes that much power directly, there is a 300W limit on those things (and it gets 75W from the motherboard)

 

[Varine]

The CPU won't necessarily get slower in itself. It's kind of like the hard drive - if it breaks, it basically won't work anymore most of the time. But what happens is it gets fatigued from stress and heat after some time, which will vary based on how much you use it and how hot you let it get. It will pretty much still work as fast as ever, but as it degrades, it will throw out erroneous data that needs to be corrected, which in effect will slow down the speed in which things get done.

 

[Slapshot136]

hard drives do slow down over time, as they write to the external areas of the disks first, where they can get more information read/writes per spin of the disk, and can write it in a nice ordered fashion - after the disk fills up, it writes wherever there is space, and closer to the center of the disk, where less information can be stored in a circle, thus slowing it's speed down - file fragmentation can slow it down even further

the CPU itself won't become slower, but the fan on top of it can get full of dust, and the thermal grease can dry out, causing it to throttle itself more - afaik there is no "correction" for CPU logical errors, those will most likely result in a BSOD/crash instantly if they were ever to occur - you might be thinking of ram (buffered ram/server ram) has error-correcting properties to it

 

[Newbie12]

no graphics card will consume 35A at 12v, the 6 pin pcie connector provides 75W the 8 pin 150W, added together that's 225, under 240

Then what's the max amps a graphics card can consume, even for the most powerfullest gaming/design GPUs?

this is wrong. no GPU consumes that much power directly, there is a 300W limit on those things (and it gets 75W from the motherboard)

Do all motherboards consume 75W, or is it more for server/gaming/design boards? How much watts do other components of the computer take up?

The CPU won't necessarily get slower in itself. It's kind of like the hard drive - if it breaks, it basically won't work anymore most of the time. But what happens is it gets fatigued from stress and heat after some time, which will vary based on how much you use it and how hot you let it get. It will pretty much still work as fast as ever, but as it degrades, it will throw out erroneous data that needs to be corrected, which in effect will slow down the speed in which things get done.

So CPUs are sort of like us, humans? We get fatigue, we can stop and rest or we continue and make errors along the way.

hard drives do slow down over time, as they write to the external areas of the disks first, where they can get more information read/writes per spin of the disk, and can write it in a nice ordered fashion - after the disk fills up, it writes wherever there is space, and closer to the center of the disk, where less information can be stored in a circle, thus slowing it's speed down - file fragmentation can slow it down even further

I thought HDDs write to the inner-most areas of the disk first and then to the outside... Or is this on a CD/DVD/Blue-ray? So where would a % of free space be best to not get any lower to avoid any theriotical performance loss?

 

[Slapshot136]

Then what's the max amps a graphics card can consume, even for the most powerfullest gaming/design GPUs?

300W/12V = 25A

Do all motherboards consume 75W, or is it more for server/gaming/design boards? How much watts do other components of the computer take up?

no. motherboards can provide up to 75W to a graphics card via a PCIe x16 slot, this is how the low-end graphic cards with no power adapters get their power



So CPUs are sort of like us, humans? We get fatigue, we can stop and rest or we continue and make errors along the way.

read the next post


I thought HDDs write to the inner-most areas of the disk first and then to the outside... Or is this on a CD/DVD/Blue-ray? So where would a % of free space be best to not get any lower to avoid any theriotical performance loss?

there is no breaking point at which performance suffers, it will slowly lose performance as it fills up - not sure about cd/dvd/blue-ray, as there it depends more on the speed of the reader/burner and the capabilities of the disk itself

 

[Newbie12]

300W/12V = 25A

Oh. So if I had one like that, I'd need to get a psu that supplies atleast 25A for one of the rails of +12v, right?

no. motherboards can provide up to 75W to a graphics card via a PCIe x16 slot, this is how the low-end graphic cards with no power adapters get their power

Oh, so that's the minimum watts a a modern motherboard would need to have to operate properly, right? With all the other components connected, minus the optical drives, HDDs etc. It would be around 100 watts?

read the next post

What next post?

there is no breaking point at which performance suffers, it will slowly lose performance as it fills up

So right after I start filling in things on the HDD, it start to gradually slow down?

 

[Slapshot136]

Oh. So if I had one like that, I'd need to get a psu that supplies atleast 25A for one of the rails of +12v, right?

out of that 300, 75 would come from the motherboard, so your only looking at 18A for the remaining 225W



Oh, so that's the minimum watts a a modern motherboard would need to have to operate properly, right? With all the other components connected, minus the optical drives, HDDs etc. It would be around 100 watts?

no. the motherboard can provide "up to" 75W on each pcie x 16 slot, depending on how much is required



What next post?


you quoted post #29, read post #30

So right after I start filling in things on the HDD, it start to gradually slow down?

yes - but this is not really noticeable at first, and as soon as you start deleting things, and formatting stuff, it becomes hard to control - this is one of the primary reasons to parition a HDD, such that the 1st partition is in the "fast" area, and the 2nd partition is in the "slow" area, and thus you can control what should go where - read up on short stroking a HDD if you are interested in this

 

[Newbie12]

yes - but this is not really noticeable at first, and as soon as you start deleting things, and formatting stuff, it becomes hard to control - this is one of the primary reasons to parition a HDD, such that the 1st partition is in the "fast" area, and the 2nd partition is in the "slow" area, and thus you can control what should go where - read up on short stroking a HDD if you are interested in this

Oh, I see partitioning drives give added performance preference in the first drive than the others...

out of that 300, 75 would come from the motherboard, so your only looking at 18A for the remaining 225W

Hm, PSU will only just power the graphics card and nothing else....

no. the motherboard can provide "up to" 75W on each pcie x 16 slot, depending on how much is required

So it's the amount of PCIE x16 slots you got determine how much the mainboard will suck up?

you quoted post #29, read post #30

I see.

 

[Slapshot136]

So it's the amount of PCIE x16 slots you got determine how much the mainboard will suck up?

that would be a maximum.. if they are empty, or the graphic cards are idleing or not low-end cards that don't use 75W, then it won't use that much - also the motherboard powers the CPU and itself, the power going to add-on cards isn't the total power that it consumes