My power unit has blown again that is 2 this year, is there a way of not using my 8 CPU's and only do shall we say 6 as the temp seems to be in the 60's

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Sorry to here about the premature departure of your PSU :-(

A question - What size was it?

As a guide, I would be running at least a 600W PSU, if not a 750W one, from a "reputable" manufacturer.

I run similar CPU to you in two rigs, one has a pair of GTX980 and the other a pair of GTX780, in the former I have a 750W PSU, and the latter a 1500W PSU (There were plans for that PC, but events have overtaken them). Both my CPU are actually higher power draw than yours....

Your CPU temps do seam a bit high, on the one AMD PC I monitor the temperature on the CPU is sitting around 45C, with all 8 cores thrashing away like crazy (with an ambient of about 33C.

Something like Tthrottle may help, but that is more like a sticking plaster on a broken arm than a solution for you PSU problems.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I would recommend to by a PSU that is 80+ certified.

http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/80pluspowersupplies.aspx

This will save a lot on electricity, as a more efficient PSU gives you the same power for less electricity consumed. It also produces less heat.

These might be a little bit more expensive, but you easily get that back on saved electricity.

Especially for 24/7 use you save a lot.

Could be lots of things making the PSU's pop.

The orders of likelihood are:

1. Crappy Brand

2.System draws more than its rated for. You want a buffer of not less than 20%, typically. So, if your system pulls 600 watts, you're gonna want a 720. Ambient temperature effects this, so if the room is hot, you'll need even more buffer.

3. Bad ground. Or a crappy surge protector making a bad ground.
Explanation here: http://www.zerosurge.com/technical-info/how-surge-suppression-works/
(Also best surge protectors you can get)

4. Crappy power. Either the sine wave is bad, you're getting emi down the line, or you're getting spikes and/or slumps. In all of the cases above you'll need an oscilloscope to figure that out, and the only real solution, short of going to war with the power company, is to get yourself a good UPS to clean up the power.

My power unit has blown again that is 2 this year, is there a way of not using my 8 CPU's and only do shall we say 6 as the temp seems to be in the 60's

First of all, please do report brand and model of Your PSU. That would help a lot to resolve problem.

+1

PSU brand and rating
I am running my machines 24/7 and nothing has happened in years that wasn't somewhat related to me screwing with the systems
Also having a good battery backup is a goid idea . I'm not a big fan of surge protectors

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I came down with a bad case of i don't give a crap

Check the obvious.
Bad cabling or contacts. You might want to change to a different outlet, also.
Replace cables, extension or whatever between the outlet and your computer.

I do not believe that surge protectors do anything useful at all. The most "crap" on the line is produced by the PSU itself.
I had way more UPSes failing than computers, causing more problems than the occasion power outage.

That's from my experience.

I always use a calculator to decide how much PSU I need.

http://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

Click on the expert button as that gives you more options on add ons for your system.

I also recommend at least a Gold or Platinum if this is a pure cruncher, on 24/7.

UPS or not....Kind of depends on where your computer is at. For my 2 top rigs I used to use UPS until I upgrade their PSU above and beyond what the UPS were rated for. I could have gotten bigger UPS but the $$$ was outrageous.

I ended up going with 2 of theses

http://www.apc.com/products/family/?id=67

I did this as the power where I have my computers dips several times during the day, every day. There have also been a few overvoltage that I saw on this machine. It's an older building and there are several other building near by with large industrial machinery.

Just my 2 cents...


Zalster

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well I think it was my power unit there was a flash and a loud bang inside the machine and as far as I know it is only a 500 watt one

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My power unit has blown again that is 2 this year, is there a way of not using my 8 CPU's and only do shall we say 6 as the temp seems to be in the 60's

Forgot about this, you change your setting in the preferences to say use at most 80% of Core. That should limit work to just 6 of the 8 cores

AS for UPS's ... don't cheap out on them, consumer series are crap and will causes you grief. Spend the money and get a commercial one that will last for many years.

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My top cards are HD5850's which are all powered by Antec 550W 80+ units. If you are running 24/7 you need to buy quality, and even then not stress the PSU above about 70% full load.

It's bad for them if they underused and bad if they overstressed you gotta find the sweetspot and you have a psu for many years

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I came down with a bad case of i don't give a crap

To answer your main question.
Of course you can run on lets say 6 out of 8 CPU cores.

In boinc preferences set use processors to 75% for 6 cores.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

well I think it was my power unit there was a flash and a loud bang inside the machine and as far as I know it is only a 500 watt one

I don't know what the actual power ratings for your CPU & video card are, but I expect 120W & 200W would be the absolute maximum. With HDDs, memory, chipset & other devices total system power would be under 400W.
So a 500W PSU would be OK, but only if it is from a tier one manufacturer.
There are many cheaper PSU around that don't even come close to their claimed ratings.

A 550W PSU from Antec, Corsair, Cooler Master, Enermax, Seasonic etc would be suitable.
Better quality PSUs are also capable of dealing with poorer quality mains power, although a good quality online UPS would be best if you have cruddy mains supply power.

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Grant
Darwin NT

The best efficiency of power supplies is at about 50% load.
This leaves enough spare power for additions ( new graphics card or so)and the PSU lasts longer, as you are not anywhere near 100% load.

500W is certainly close to the line, however if it is from a reputable manufacturer I would expect to to last more than six months (of 24/7 operation).
I would start to look at other things - Motherboard? Case fans? Debris under motherboard?

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

actually best efficiency is reached by most PSU at about 80% load which in my eyes would be the sweet spot for having a machine run at since that is what the PSU was designed to run at

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I came down with a bad case of i don't give a crap

you have the FX chip .First of

Its uses more power than what AMD say .

Overclocking it even by only .1 ghz pushes the power use up by as much as 50%

You need a single rail 12 vote 80 plus psu and must be able to pull 90% of the total power output through the 12 volt rail

You will need at least 600 watt

I lost 2 PSU's within 1 month when I first set the FX machine up and leart the hard way .

Also when the temp goes above 63 c it will start to lose control of it's power controllers and this will stuff up a cheap PSU and will also start to return errors

So would advise you to also think about Liquid cooling .

I have a Thermalteck smart 750 watt 80 plus PSU with a single 12 volt rail that can pump out 730 watts through the 12 volt rail and a Cooler Master Seidon 120 v Liquid cooling and now the FX runs flat out 24/7 and the temp is max 58 c in summer with air temp of 35 c

good luck

EDIT :I have 2 gtx 650 GPU's on that machine witch is also why it needs 750 watt the gtx 650 GPU's use a bit of power about 180 watts by themselfs

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My power unit has blown again that is 2 this year, is there a way of not using my 8 CPU's and only do shall we say 6 as the temp seems to be in the 60's

First of all, please do report brand and model of Your PSU. That would help a lot to resolve problem.

No response to my question.

What is Your power supply brand and it's model.

If You request for help, please do respond to our (helpers) questions.

At least we know what size the OP thinks it was:

and as far as I know it is only a 500 watt one

Now some 500W PSUs are good for 500W 24/7/365, while others are "fragile", and wont like run 24/7, even at part load....



btw. As a PUS designer I can make one that is most efficient at 99% load, or at 50% load, or even over a wide range, say 45%-99%. Its all a matter of how the beast is designed, how the components are selected, how the heat is managed. As a design exercise we built a couple of real beasts 1500W continuous rated, 1hour rated 2500W, or >3.5kW for 1 minute, efficiency was >90% over the load range 500W to 1500W. I wish I had the schematics software source etc. for them...

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?