I have done all the above now. Still doest work i am about ready to just trade it in for a xfx or a asus cause this is just ridiculous. I mean its pathetic i dint even get to the animation on ungine valley i just black screened on the loading screen.
Ah I see, fair enough. Although I have a cx600m and I can make my computer black screen if I up the volts to +70 in msi afterburner and play a demanding game... They are pretty low end/ budget PSU's and we have them paired with high end cards. If you can get your hands on another PSU it may be worth a go. Im going to change my PSU anyway
EDIT: I have learned my mistake. Thank you for not being rude about it.
Im going to try under clock it to it works. Right now its on a vddc buffer of 50 i though that might help.
Sorry but that's not how efficiency on PSUs works. A 500W PSU should be able to deliver 500W, end of the story. The efficiency just tells you how much more power it will draw from the wall in order to achieve that. The problem *might* have something to do with the fact that this PSU can only deliver 38A on the +12v rail, so that's 450W on that rail. Depending on you CPU and the rest of your hardware that might be an issue.
Nohrellas I was thinking the same thing, I can remember watching the current draw in gpuz and my pc would black screen once it hit the same value each time. I cant remember what it was but it was beating the shit out of my PSU anyway. The air coming from the PSU exhaust was pretty warm too(Power supply orientated to draw fresh air from outside the case). All the signs of it being worked too hard...
OP what cpu are you running? Im using an 8320 at 4.8 so I have simply been pushing PSU too much.
fx 6300
Overclocked? If so, what voltage? Etc. That's a 6-core part with an older architecture after all, if you bundle that with a 260W GPU that might peak at 270W-280W and a PSU that can only deliver 450W on the +12V rail then that might be an issue.
Try disabling any overclocks and slightly underclocking your CPU and GPU, if it suddenly becomes stable then your PSU might be the culprit here.
Testing the GPU in a different system and trying to swap out the PSU would obviously be ideal, but you already said that that's not really an option.
It isn't overclocked.
Still, if you got a replacement r9 290 and it continues doing this I would look at another area of your pc.
Just so you know my friend has an fx 6300 at 4.0 (stock voltage, turbo off). And a 7950 on a 500w psu. If he forces constant voltage in afterburner, sets the gpu voltage to 1.25 and runs heaven his pc black screens.
In fairness he has a pretty turd psu, cheap ocz (cant remember exact model) one. Maybe only 28 amps on the 12v iirc. But thats just an example that its more than just the advertised wattage that is important.
Im thinking im going to get either an ax850 or something from silverstone or seasonic.
A solid Seasonic 75W or 85W will work beautifully. I have an XFX 850W (Seasonic made) and it is a champ. I only have a 970 on it now (with an overclocked fx-8150), but it once ran two 6950s overclocked to the hilt bitcoin mining 24/7, it it was rock solid. I killed the 6950s, but XFX replaced them. I would only buy XFX for AMD cards. They are the best.
Sorry thanks for the info