SLi 7800 GTX OC and raid - ps burnout

I've now burned out two Enermax Noisetaker 600's and I'm trying to figure out why.

Here's the rig:
Athlon X2 4400
DFI Lanparty UT SLI-DR
4x 512MB|OCZ PC4000 EL VoltageExtreme
2x BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC
Western Digital Raptor 36GB system drive
4x Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB (in RAID config)
dvdrom/cdburner
Koolance PC3-725BK Water-cooled case


The first time I burned out the power supply, it happened on the third boot, after two unsucessful boots. I RMA'd the motherboard, RAM, and power supply, and all was going well on the second installation. I installed windows, ran the Nvidia 7800 demos... and after about 4 hours of playing around I decided to put in the 4 drives that would be my RAID array. It booted up fine and I even rebooted a few times because I had to install the driver to detect those drives as a RAID. Anyway, about 6% of the way into the format of the RAID ( 40 minutes ) - poof, the new power supply died and so went my hopes and dreams.

The question is, did I overload my power supply? Is that why it died? I've built 100's of machines and I don't recall ever being able to overload a power supply - on the other hand, I never had this much of a setup. Power supplies have died, but usually after a faulty installation of some component (improper seating) or because the electricity in the building was from 100-year-old wiring (but that never killed a power supply within hours).

Anyway, not all of what I've said is relevant, but I'd certainly like to know if anyone out there has any idea why I keep destroying my power supplies.

Thanks,
Zach

 

I forgot to mention that I've ordered a different power supply that I'm going to try out before I bother to RMA everything. I figure I have nothing to lose if I was going to send it all back anyway.

I ordered the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool T85SSI 850W SSI/EPS SLI 12V Power Supply

The new power supply I ordered is probably overkill, but at least I won't be able to say the power supply wasn't powerful enough.

 

Did the previous power supplies have the correct voltage set on the input, and were there any loose connections at all?

 

It would be very unlikely that there were any loose connections, as I checked and re-checked about 15 times before I powered up both times.

I'm not sure which voltage input you're referring to, though. The only one I can think of is the one on the back of the power supply, but I would think that if that weren't set right, the machine wouldn't have powered up at all.

-Zach

 

what wattage are the noisetakers 600? The dual SLI + x2 + 4 drives + water setup is a big toll on a PSU.

 

The big question is - can this burn out a power supply or would the power supply just shut itself down before letting it burn out?

 

I've heard of PSU imploding from overload, but im not sure if that pertains to high quality vs generic.

 

Did a rough calculation on your PSU and i think "minimum" should've been 600W (maybe a little more)

 

How did you determine this? I've added up the wattage requirements of each component based on each manufacturer's specs and I only get around 400 watts. But I don't claim to be an expert, after all, I talked to tech support at BFG and they also think that the 600w power supply is barely enough.

 

I'm personally not sure if 600 was even enough. The minimum requirements for 7800 gtx sli is 500 watts in sli.

I see that your water cooler requires 17 watts.

Anyway, I saw a system running similar to this, except had a 3500, and running 6800 gt's in sli. They had a 525 watt power supply.

So, for your system, I'm unsure if 600 was even bare minimum. What raid were you going to use? Surely not raid 0, I'd hate to see one of those drives go down.

 

If BFG said barely enough at 600watts, I'd have put in something larger. Typically, your computer will consume more power and more heat at a high load.

 

Don't worry, I'm planning on RAID 5, which I've heard such good things about.

 

So, then you are buying a Raid card that supports sata and RAID 5 then? From the stats above, looks like you can afford this. Did you when a lottery or something?

 

I couldn't find the link that I wanted but this is close. The site is a bit out of date and you have more hardware listed than it allows you to select.

Nice system, hope you get things resolved.

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

 

The DFI Lanparty UT SLI-DR has a SiliconImage SATA controller onboard that supports RAID 5 and I think the motherboard was $170. The whole system together cost about $3000, but I guess with the T85SSI 850w power supply I'm closer to $3500. I just haven't bought a computer in 2 years and I'm a freelance animator - so I plan on writing it all of for tax purposes.

-Zach

 

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

 

Why didn't you buy 2 quadro fx 4500's instead? Though, your system price would increase dramatically! This would be perfect for cad/animation/rendering.

 

w

cant game on quadros! http://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

I'll just use softquadro and run the two 7800's as fx4500's if possible. It's not too much hassle to just change the drivers every time I want to switch from gaming to animating or back. Someone should make software that lets you toggle the drivers like that in one click...