Power Supply Crisis....

[Shiranai_Baka]

Ack.. anyone know ways to save more power? I just got this card today and I want to use it to its fullest!

[atiVidia]

give me ALL ur specs

and the psu ur usin

[Shiranai_Baka]

Ok, The specs are pretty much on my sig except Its not 5200 now.. its 5900XT.. and I'm using an axio technology 400W PSU

[Virtualbody1234]

Disconnect one of your hard disks and any extra fans you can do without temporarily.

[Shiranai_Baka]

Well, I need all my hard drives.. and as for the fans, Are you sure?

[kaiweiler]

temporarily! :lol:
take out your storage drive, and i'm pretty sure he means just take out the fans to see if it will free up enough power, if so then you either need to cut down on some stuff or get a bigger psu

[Shiranai_Baka]

Well, If I was to get a new PSU, How much would you guys think I would need?

[Virtualbody1234]

Are you sure you need more power?

How did you determine that?

[Shiranai_Baka]

After it says not enough power it says this:

"To protect your hardware from potential damage or causing a potential system lockup, the graphics processor has lowered its performance to a level that allows continued safe operations."

:(

[atiVidia]

why do i get the feeling u forgot to plug the molex?


actualy, im positive that u forgot to plug the molex. with ur system specs u should easily be able to use the card.


the message u recieved is the same that i <s>recieve</s>receive when i unplug my molex ;)

[amphoteric88]

I doubt your components aren&#39;t getting enough power/current.

I run an Athlon 2700+, 3 hard drives, a radeon 9600 pro (overclocked to 520/620), a cd-rw drive, the cpu fan and a case fan all on 420W...

edit: you could temporarily disconnect your cd-rom drive...unless you really need two optical drives...

[gungrave]

unplug any usb things? :unsure:

[Shiranai_Baka]

Originally posted by atiVidia@8 May 2004 - 03:17
why do i get the feeling u forgot to plug the molex?


actualy, im positive that u forgot to plug the molex. with ur system specs u should easily be able to use the card.


the message u recieved is the same that i <s>recieve</s>receive when i unplug my molex ;)
molex? is it the auxiliary plug thing? the white plug? If you mean that, Then Yes, I did.

[amphoteric88]

Originally posted by Shiranai_Baka@8 May 2004 - 03:43
Then Yes, I did.
Yes, you forgot or yes, you plugged it in?

[Shiranai_Baka]

Yes, I did plug it in..

[gungrave]

Originally posted by Shiranai_Baka@8 May 2004 - 03:51
Yes, I did plug it in..
:unsure: try using a nother one might be faulty...
:frusty:

[Shiranai_Baka]

faulty.? thats actually possible? Well what if I were to buy another PSU? how much power would I need?

Edit: Ok, I switched those auxiliary power connector thingies and the message still comes up. Btw, I have 4 fans with the specs I have (omit the GFX5200) do the 4 fans take up alot of energy?

[clocker]

Originally posted by Shiranai_Baka@7 May 2004 - 20:04
After it says not enough power it says this:

"To protect your hardware from potential damage or causing a potential system lockup, the graphics processor has lowered its performance to a level that allows continued safe operations."

:(
What is the message (exactly) that is telling you it "needs more power"?
Assuming that your PSU is not a complete POS then 400w should be plenty to run your system.

[lynx]

Use Aida32 or something like that to check your voltages, particularly 12V.

If it really is a power supply problem the 12V line will be well down.

[clocker]

Originally posted by lynx@8 May 2004 - 07:35
Use Aida32 or something like that to check your voltages, particularly 12V.

If it really is a power supply problem the 12V line will be well down.
As an aside...
I get very different readings on my 12v rail from different programs.
AIDA32...12.21v
MBM5 and Speedfan...11.56v
BIOS...12.26v

Digital multimeter reading from a Molex....12.28v

Hard to tell which to believe.

[lynx]

The digital multimeter should be most accurate, assuming it is calibrated correctly.

The onboard chip only has an 8 bit A/D converter so it is only accurate to about 0.05v. Your digital multimeter will probably have a 12 bit converter which should be accurate (in that range) to about 0.005v.

Your bios reading of 12.26v is without any processor or graphics load, and considering the accuracy of the onboard chip it is equivalent to your digital multimeter. That could easily drop to the 12.21v shown by aida32 (it is only 1 bit down on the A/D converter). I would be very suspicious of readings which vary much from the bios figure when the system is not under load.

In any case, normal voltages will probably vary by about 0.1v in constant monitoring.

If there&#39;s a monitor specifically from the motherboard manufacturer that will usually be the most accurate, I use Asusprobe but I find that Aida32 agrees exactly with Asusprobe,

[clocker]

Thanks.

[Shiranai_Baka]

After a full nights sleep, I come back on my computer only to find that it can&#39;t boot up to windows because of a windows corrupted file.... So.. I&#39;ll post when my computer is working again.

[harrycary]

Ahem, you should be looking into how many watts your components require and not the voltage requirements.

That is fundamental.

/my 2 cents.

[zapjb]

clocker&nbsp; Posted on 8 May 2004 - 09:34
... Assuming that your PSU is not a complete POS then 400w should be plenty to run your system.

Too big of an assumption for me. Coughs ... Antec ... Now they&#39;re all going to think you&#39;re crazy. Shhh :lol:

[Shiranai_Baka]

I heard that some power supplies don&#39;t actually supply the 400W that it says it does.. is this true? is this relevant to what efficiency is?

[lynx]

The problem is that poor quality PSU&#39;s may be able to deliver their promised power, but stability suffers at the top end, so you may see unacceptable voltage fluctuations and dropoffs.

Remember too that although the total power capability may be 400W, there are restrictions on the amount of power you can draw on the different voltages. So you may have plenty of spare capacity on 3.3V and 5V, but be over the limit on 12V. If that is the case you would need a PSU with more capacity on the 12V circuits.

That&#39;s just an example, I don&#39;t know whether the 5900 uses the 5v line or the 12v line, it is unlikely to use both. That&#39;s the reason why Nvidia recommend a 480W PSU for the 6800 Ultra card, not that it needs all that much more power but because it is taking it all from one source so the others are beefed up (by the PSU makers) as a natural consequence.