New installation Windows 7 keeps hanging

You'll notice the supply listed there was included with the case. ut oh! It's not the wattage so much with only a single hard drive in use if you are running stock but the quality of supplies tossed in on package deals for cases! Tepid does a valid point there about getting into a good name supply over the low quality typically seen with cheap supplies included.

When mentioning power supply wattage that brings to mind the power supply calculator seen at Antec Power Supply Calculator

With 5 sata HDs, two optical drives, and a tv tuner card tossed into the mix here the recommended is 587w minimum using that with a 700w OCZ supply in use. Even running this one stock I left a little extra to cover things a bit.

For a new build seeing problems nothing can be ruled out until the actual problem is traced. That will mean going back over everything! Once you can rule out one of the things mentioned already you have to go onto the next.

When mentioning power supply wattage that brings to mind the power supply calculator seen at Antec Power Supply Calculator

With 5 sata HDs, two optical drives, and a tv tuner card tossed into the mix here the recommended is 587w minimum using that with a 700w OCZ supply in use. Even running this one stock I left a little extra to cover things a bit.

PSU Calcs are nice and all, but I advise always adding 100 to 200 W over what they recommend.

I generally don't use them.
I use a deductive reasoning....

Old Systems ran on about 350W just a bit prior to 2000. After 2000, it was in the 450W - 500W range for a long time. You never really needed more than that. Now, with the Video Cards on the market, more than one HDD, and all the USB crap we tend to use. 550 is minimum for a system using on-board graphics, one HDD, a DVD RW, and a few USB devices.
you start adding stuff like higher end video, extra HDD's etc, add about 50W to 100W per Internal device to be sure you are leaving head room. ie, Video Card (550 + 100W= 650W minimum), if it's a Hard Drive or Optical drive, only add 50W. Not exactly per HDD, but maybe 50W per 2 HDD's or Optical Drives.

That is just a rough over view, it's not an exact science, but if used with a bit of logical reasoning, it gives you a good overall estimated wattage required.

Look at my specs,,, personally, If I added another 2 HDD's I would add another 50W to 100W (so 800W to 850W PSU).

Hope that helps and is not too confusing.

That's what ended up being the case here with the 700w supply being 113w over what that showed. Once the next build is up and running then I can crank things up on this one for a bit to see just what it will handle. But I also have to look at the first board for this one simply quitting in 3 days time when first built!

RMA time!

Not completely... We don't know what Video is being used,, On-Board or other.

I used the calc listed above,,,, (I personally don't trust these,,, but)

I chose High End Desktop Board
Original Posters exact CPU
4 x sticks DDR3
1 x BluRay
1 x High Speed Sata HDD
1 x GTX 295 Video card
4 x USB devices
2 x 120MM Fans
which = 373W

For me, I still wouldn't put less than a 550W in there,,
but if the calc is right and his PSU is fine,, then it shouldn't have a problem powering his system.

However,,, these are all assumptions.... and the problems talked about here very well could be PSU related.
But they could also be all the other things mentioned as well.
These types of problems are not (unfortunately) a straight forward answer and hopefully we aren't getting off track.

So, I apologize for taking us on a side tangent about PSU's.

Surprizingly some will end up with a 450w that will take a beating and last while larger supplies while simply quit on you too soon. A great deal has to do with the quality as well as what you see for amp on the rails. You can have a higher wattage supply that gets pulled down due to poor regulation while some lower powered supply holds steady.

When first building this case I went for a supply that was actually a bit more then what was needed for two HDs, a pair of optical drives, and a tuner card as well as the video and sound cards. When expanding by adding in a larger storage drive plus one more for testing 7 plus buying a second lager storage drive you can see 5 over 2 satas made up for that.

The first golden rule with any new build is having a good supply to cover your needs plus! That's the ground work as well as adequate cooling for the intended build. The problem with the combo case/supply included deals is seeing some low powered supply tossed in as one thought for not providing enough power.

Getting back to the subject however the supply is still only one item to consider when seeing problems with a new build. A bad cap on the board or bios programming issue can also cause problems as well as not having set the dram timings correctly for the memory installed.

ram timings correctly for the memory installed.

Which is something I did not consider but can be highly likely.
I had a system that had problems till I tweaked the voltage on my RAM.
Then it was perfect.

ignatzatsonic said:

Does anyone even bother to actually measure the power used by a system at idle or under load?

Whatever became of that radical idea?

Never mind what a calculator says.

Try checking what a few systems actually use.

Not really,,, there is almost no point to doing that anymore.
I will say that 1200W PSU in a system with either Crossfire or SLI and a couple HDD's maybe a few GIG's of ram is totally a waste of money and over kill.

But, when building a PC, you really need to know what you are doing and do your homework.

I also say you get what you pay for.

But I think we are getting off track and the OP hasn't even come back to say anything else. Yet.

This is why I suggested a look at the dram timings to see if those are set correctly since memory problems can seem like bad ram when all you might need is a change in settings. Personally to get to 4gb I went with a pair of 2gb dimms rather then populating all four dimm slots with 1gb dimms.

Some boards are known to be hassles when all slots are used. The OP will still have to get to us here to let us know what can be ruled out and what still needs to be looked at.