Not enough 12v power

[DJ12]

I have recently purchased a x1950xt and a 500watt PSU, however much to my annoyance the PSu only has 17A on the 12v rail.

I have ordered a new 600watt with 30A on the 12v rail which should be OK.

Now, my question is, will running my card at less than the required amps ruin it?

It is automatically underclocked to 500mhz (core) and 600mhz (memory) which according to atitools draws a maximum of 19 amps and it ran very stable last night without crashing, but obviously if this may cause some long term damage I'd rather not be using it until my new PSU arrives.

 

[Anarchist4000]

It won't likely damage the card however it's possible you'll see some crashes or something along those lines. I wouldn't really recommend running it that way. It's more like unplugging your computer when it's powered on. While it won't necessarily damage anything it doesn't exactly help system stability.

As PSUs work harder they get hotter. The hotter they are the less power they're capable of handling typically. So while things might seem ok, once the ambient temperature in the room goes up a bit or the supply starts warming up you could see problems.

If you're buying a decent quality supply you shouldn't be having any issues at 500W unless you system is stacked full of hardware. If you're keeping it in 2D mode all the time things are probably fine until you get a new supply.

 

[DJ12]

Thanks for you advice.

I have the new PSU now and everything is running smoothly, although I have discovered that it was probably working perfectly before anyway much to my annoyance.

ATITools which I was using to discover the voltages and clocks aparently doesn't work very well with my card as it has 2d/3d mode switching and ATITools would only work in 2d mode.

I installed Rivatuner after fitting my new PSU, discovering this information, set up the monitoring part of it and low and behold as soon as I started a game the clocks changed to what they should be.

Guess I have enough juice in the PSU to upgrade my CPU and motherboard later in the year though so I guess it's not that bad.