Weird power problem.

AnCapaillMor

Every now and then i've been an nvidia message that theres not eough power going into the card, so it'll lower the gfx cards performance. I still play on and find no difference. Next boot it'll dissapear. No problems so i don't take notice. Last night for the feck i tried to dual channel my memory, and when i powered up my system, it powered on and off. Could'nt get it to even flicker after that. however i plugged it out for a few seconds it would flicker. So anyway tried some trouble shooting, stripped the system down to its bare minimum, and it powerd up, plugged in the video card it powered up, put in hd, it flickered and died. anytime i plugged in power to 2 devices or more it flickered(thats with the hds and cd not connected to the mb, just the molex connectors). So pretty much decided my PSU was fecked.

Heres the weird thing. 10 mins later after going mad and kicking random objects. I plugged in the system and it booted and went into XP. Unfortunately i did'nt have my boot hd setup as 0, so had to switch cables and had to power off. switched the cables, went to power up and the same crap again. Plugged it out, left it for 5 minutes, and voila it powered up and booted, played some BF2 with no problems. Powered it off when i was finished, just to see would it power back on and it did'nt. it powered up again this morning with no problems.

Pretty sure its the PSU(it's a 550w coolermaster). Anyone ever see this problem before? I fix servers and never seen anything like this.

Jammer

what do u mean 'tried to dual channel my memory?'

AnCapaillMor

Throw it in slot 1 and 3, instead of one and two. Did'nt work, my aquamark went from 74,000 to 65,000.

masteroftherealm

Whats your full system spec?

AnCapaillMor

AMD 4400 X2, 2 gig ram, 1 X 250 ide hd, 2 X 250 + 1 X 300 sata, MSI K8n nforce4, 1 dvdrw, 1 dvd, audigy 2, 1 gig ntwk card and and a gainward 6800gs, coolermaster 550W psu, gigabyte auroura case, with 2 fans off the mb and one of a molex on the psu.

It's not a power issue, as i pretty much the same in my last system with a 400w psu.

Cuddlesworth

Try the ram in slots 2 and 4

AnCapaillMor

*bump* anyone seen this before?

DemonOfTheFall

Theres no way that you don't have enough power... Also, why would your RAM not work in dual channel mode ? If your ram won't work in dual channel youve got bigger things to be worried about.

AnCapaillMor

Did work but did not improve my benchmark score.

K.O.Kiki

Could it not just be random problem with the PSU (surge or whatever)?

AnCapaillMor

it better be because i just saw a hiper psu in pcworld and i'm going to purchase it.

K.O.Kiki

Shop around before you buy it -- PCWorld usually have the worst prices in my experience. Try Peats or Maplin's if they're close (buy only buy good brands like Tagan, Hiper (I think), Antec etc -- stay away from Fortron & NorthQ especially! Ideally, post exact models you find before purchase (like I have to tell ya )

AnCapaillMor

Well it was the psu, no more random insufficent video card power messages and it powers up and down. The hiper seemed to be gone from pcworld so got a 600w enermax mainly because of the 2 pcie connectors. Nearly had a sh1t attack as it had no 12v connector, nothing in the manual then saw a bit of paper telling me that the psu had changed the manual was out of date and to use the 8 pin to 4pin adaptor, phew!!

K.O.Kiki

AnCapaillMor wrote:

Well it was the psu [etc]

A lesson to all.