Windows 7: PSU Query

i have an old PSU that i've been using for probably a decade. It works fine and better than an EZCool 500w that was useless despite costing my £50.

So the question is, i'm trying to unlock my Athlon2 X3 450 3.2Ghz using my Biostar a880g+ mainboard and it wont do it. Do you think upgrading the PSU is likely to help or did i just pull a short straw with the CPU and its not stable enough to unlock?

Cheers all, thanks for any advice

Your PS will have very little to do with overclocking your CPU. Sure some might argue stability issues, and like everything else in a system it could play a role, but if you have a good quality power supply, then that's not going to be the factor on whether you can overclock your CPU.

And based on your system specs, you really don't need much more than a 500/550 watt PS.

In short, if you can't overclock your CPU now, I highly doubt you'll be able to do so after upgrading the power supply.

My two cents.

I'm not familiar with the terminology .

Please explain.

The Athlon triple (X3) core CPUs are actually quad (X4) core ones, with the fourth core disabled, either as a result of it failing quality checking or to meet quota restrictions.
In some, but not all, cases the dormant core can be reenabled. See the following YouTube video (apologies for it being in German).

Thanks, i guess i'm just unlucky- been plagued with blue screens and failed installs from the very start with this system - i thought getting an AMD GPU and CPU and AM3 mboard would mean compatibility issues would be minimal but i seem to be wrong. Thinking of a fresh install at the moment in the hope this might be cleaner and let me overclock a few things to improve game performance.

Cheers for your advice!!

First thing you need to do is get the system running properly....then worry about unlocking cores/overclocking.....You might want to post your crash dump at "crashes and debugging" and get that sorted out first.....

It's a wonder your system is working at all. According to AMD, the Radeon HD5770 requires a minimum PSU rating of 450W, yet you're using one of just 400W. It's also unlikely to have the PCI-Express power conector. I would seriously consider upgrading your PSU to 650W (or greater) as the cause of your BSODs and other issues is likely to be due to the failure of your PSU to supply sufficient power to your system.

Based on this info you definitely need to upgrade your power supply, but you don't need any thing higher than a 600/650. A 650 watt would be more then enough to power your system.

BTW would be nice to know the brand and model you have now (power supply).

Thanks for your suggestions all,

i think the blue screens are software issues because they tend to ramble on about drivers and stuff and are clearly linked to certain program installations that upset the system. But i also get slow game play after a while when playing DOW2 even though my GPU doesnt seem to get above 55C. It hasnt met my expectations but i'm thinking i just skimped on the GPU and need to upgrade, probably to a HD5870 when i can afford it.

The PSU isnt a branded one - i got it with a pentium 800Mhz system i bought about ten years ago. Like i say though- while it looks like its nicked from a WW2 bomber it performs surprisingly better than the newer 700w (not 500) EZCool which i bought a year or so and binned with almost no use because it was rubbish. I went on a site which added up the power requirements of all the components in your PC and i came out at about 380w so not sure how people are arriving at the 6/650 watt figure. Also not sure from the posts whether it will affect my overclocking ability but thinking of aiming for a corsair 650w in the hope this will improve gaming performance with DOW2. If not, i will be looking at a GPU uprade is suppose.

What to you think- best buy/ worth buying?
Corsair Memory TX650 V2 650W EnthusiastSeries (CMPSU-650TXV2UK) - dabs.com