Is your PC ready for that Black Friday/Cyber Monday upgrade special that you plan to get this year? If your PC is like my editing PC, probably not. You might need to upgrade your PC now to make a Black Friday/Cyber Monday upgrade special possible. This week I replaced the Rosewill Glacier 500-watt power supply with the EVGA SuperNOVA GA 850-watt power supply. I’ll be able to get that Black Friday/Cyber Monday upgrade special without blowing up my power supply.
Rosewill Glacier 500 PSU
The Rosewill Glacier 500-watt power supply was a Newegg Black Friday special that I got for $25 USD in 2018. A semi-modular bronze power supply with the following connectors:
- Motherboard
- CPU
- 2 x PCI-E
- 5 x SATA
A great little power supply for the last three years. But not for the next ten years.
According to the be quiet! power calculator, my PC will need more power if I expand beyond what I have. If I replace the Ryzen 7 2700 with the Ryzen 7 5800X, the processor wattage increases from 65 watts to 105 watts. A new video card would require more power and more PCI-e connectors than the Radeon RX 570.
The MSI Tomahawk X570 motherboard in my PC has an eight-pin and four-pin CPU power connectors. The power supply had only an eight-pin CPU connector. The motherboard ran fine without the four-pin CPU connector plugged in. Unless you’re doing liquid nitrogen overclocking, you don’t need the second CPU connector.
A friend built his PC last year with the Asrock Taichi B550 AM4 motherboard. The system wouldn’t boot unless both eight-pin CPU connectors were plugged in. I wasn’t sure if that was BIOS related or power requirements by the Ryzen 9 5900X processor and Asus ROG STRIX 2070 video card.
A future motherboard upgrade will probably have two eight-pin CPU connectors.
EVGA SuperNOVA GA 850 PSU
The EVGA SuperNOVA GA 850-watt power supply was a Newegg Labor Day special that I got for $115 USD. A great deal since the regular price is $160 USD. A modular gold power supply with the following connectors:
- Motherboard
- 2 x CPU
- 6 x PCI-E
- 9 x SATA
This power supply does have a known issue. If you’re overclocking an Intel 10900K CPU and/or a Nvidia 3080 video card, Over Current Protection will shut down or reboot the PC. OCP should prevent your power supply from blowing up. EVGA will provide a replacement under RMA for affected owners.
The problem that I found on the power supply tester was a 70-milisecond PG signal. PG, or Power Good, signal should be 100- to 500-miliseconds according to the spec. I’ve read some user reviews that power supplies with low PG signal worked fine for them. I haven’t noticed any problems on my editing PC.
NOTE: Linus Tech Tips Forum recommends the GA series for low mid-range systems.
Redoing The Cable Management
The big challenge with installing a new power supply was redoing the cable management. Since I have more SATA connectors, I was able to remove the two splitter cables I was using.
I removed the SATA-to-fan splitter cable for the be quiet! Pure Loop AIO. If I bumped the right-side panel, the cold plate light and the pump would turn off. I plugged those connectors into fan headers on the motherboard.
I also replaced the Arctic F12 120mm fans with the be quiet! Pure Wings 2 120mm fans. Upgrading a power supply requires a lot of hard work for no obvious performance increase.
With the power supply upgrade out of the way, I can look forward to getting that Black Friday/Cyber Monday upgrade special.