So I gave my friend my I7 8700K....funny story

He was using this I5 3rd gen CPU and since I upgraded to an I9 10th gen I wanted to help him out since he’s down and out with his GF and job.

So he’s got my (delided) I7 8700K and Maxium X Code. He’s has this ThermalTake 1200w toughpower PSU that’s semi modular which came out of a IbuyPower pre-built he had before this I5 and Asus board which was back in 2009/2010 LOL.

and a 280MM Corsair Hydro liquid cooler which worked fine on his old system (Asus TUF Sabertooth board Z77 I think)

Anyway I didn’t have a newer PSU to give him but he wanted to see if this one would work with the hardware I’m giving him. Worth a test I guess.

Once we got windows up and running he loaded up his software and located his games. The temps on this thing was insane.

I remove the mild oc that was in the bios so reboot, No overclocks set, (disabled ASUS MCE) voltage would ramp up to 1.49 and during loading the CPU would break 100C. Wtf…

I told my buddy that we gotta shut this down before it blows up the cpu / board and everything else connected.

So after removing the cooler again and putting in Some T.G Kryonaut thermal Paste still no diff. Ambient temp in the room was 20c, all fans working on Extreme , CPU cooler pump was working over 2500 (saw it through ICUE)

Long of the short, I pulled the cooler out, installed/gave him my backup Corsair Hydro H150I 360MM aio and my backup PSU (Corsair RMX1000)

Once back up and running in Widows idle temps around 26c, games were testing (Star wars battle front II and Modern Warefare battlezone) now temps not hitting passed 55c.

Pretty sure that PSU being 10+ years old was the cause of all that, first time I actually seen a PSU just bring hardware to its knees.

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I’m willing to bet the old 280 failed somehow during the transfer somehow and your new 360 was what fixed it. Maybe gunked up or something. PSU won’t account for temperature differences imo

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I tested the 280MM on the test bench and it was able to cool his old I5 we took out so idk man

Pretty wild. Maybe you’re right. Haven’t seen that before either

forgot to mention when the temps were rocking up this high , the CPU was at Full 100% load (Battle front II) and CPU voltage was steady (not moving) at 1.49 v , this with all the bios settings at Auto (minus Asus MCE which was disabled) so I a thought that the PSU just couldn’t handle this new hardware.

Wouldn’t that be the motherboard that controls that though? Seems weird

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With the newer PSU its not drawing any where near that amount of voltage though, its steady no higher than 1.3, idle it’s like 1.06

Edit: Also when he’s gaming in Battle front II now, cpu load no higher than 30-50% load , looks like its leveraging all 6 cores.

Maybe 10 year old PSU just doesn’t have the right specifications for newer hardware?

I am going to run a few more tests on the bench this weekend , its a quest now to find out the true answer.

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So I have this I5 3570 and Thermaltake powering my friend’s older hardware and there’s been no issue with Temps or power running Cinebench now for the last 15 minutes. Giving it another 15 to be sure. Granted this I5 CPU is locked but the board supports overclocking, I see the turbo speeds are about 4.1ghz but CPU is quite happy. Voltage peak is around 1.30 CPU package 64c.

I guess it’s safe to say that the power supply could not handle the newer hardware.

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Maybe there’s some spec that it doesn’t follow?

I haven’t kept them that long honestly

Quite possibly, its not fully modular, but it does haver 2 8 pin EPS cables hanging off the non modular section in addition to the 24 pin Power plug. Everything else is fine but testing on the bench im not using much for graphics , just the Built in one.

This is the cooler.
https://www.newegg.com/corsair-liquid-cooling-system/p/N82E16835181100?Item=N82E16835181100

Found the power supply here.
https://www.newegg.com/thermaltake-toughpower-w0133ru-1200w/p/N82E16817153054

not following how you came to this conclusion? If the PSU was out of spec you see the PC re-boot or the VRM temps over heat.

edit: I saw your results after switching PSU. The VRM temps were most likely baking as well with all that high voltage.

Sal is correct, but the PSU may be out of spec.

The regulation on the 12V/5V rails (aka the big coil in group regulated PSU) is most likely outside the ATX spec tolerance.

FYI, this is the difference between a PSU with high wattage and a quality PSU. It’s why I see people recommend a 750w unit for a system that won’t break 275w and I just shake my head knowing they will look up a cheap 750w unit when a quality 550w unit (at the same price or cheaper) will do the job and be a better buy.

The funny thing is, it never did reboot or freeze during these high temps, I just wish I could have installed Hwinfo to see more of what was going on. Did you see any of the specs on that PSU?

One thing that stood out.

Four independent & dedicated +12V rails(12V1,12V2,12V3,12V4) provides superior performance for PC system

Don’t see this too often now days.

Just noticed this.,…

Supports Dual Core CPU / Quad Core CPU / Nvidia SLI & Quad SLI and all Multi-Core GPU technologies

Wonder if maybe it just chokes on anything above 4 Cores. LMAO. It would give credence to the results we saw.

The reboots would also be caused by under delivery but from everything you stated it seems to be over delivering.

Highly doubtful that psu has four rails, almost impossible. What it has (if I recall) is two 12v rails and each with a split… otherwise it’s one rail with four splits but I believe it’s two rails. A four rail psu would be extremely expensive.

The support list is just marketing speak. If you did exceed a split limit (you didn’t) the ocp would kick in and the psu would shut down.

I’ll tell you this, I tested a 180W Laptop charger in a laptop that typically takes 135W and the CPU was running 10-12*C warmer due to higher voltage.

On an open air test bench with a Quad core I5 3570 it works just perfectly fine under a typical load in Cinebench so I gotta say that it just isn’t capable of handling the needs of anything more than that.

The regular cinebench won’t crossload test the PSU as gaming can. You need a PSU tester to properly see what the issue is, software gets their reading all from the BIOS and it varies in levels of inaccuracy. Also you can be damaging hardware with a PSU that is out of spec even if the parts are running properly. If it was my PSU, i would send it to the recycling center farm. Not sure of what video card he has but a solid 550-650w unit should handle his needs even with an OC 8700k.