New Power Supply Requirements

ve

A few months ago I built the following rig, and it works a charm apart from the odd restart or during boot, the mouse may turn off. For those of you who don't know the mouse below (Mouse: Razer Diamondback Plasma 1600dpi Gaming Mouse Limited Edition - Retail (KB-013-RA)), it has a shaded case with blue LEDs inside. When I power the machine, the LEDs in the mouse and my keyboard all come on and stay on until about half way through the windows boot. Then as windows startup probes the devices, both keyboard and mouse turn off, the keyboard turns back on and the mouse sometimes flickers on and then stays off. When I arrive in windows I have no control of the mouse and must reboot the machine (it usually works the next time round).

I had a look at the temperatures inside the box and between the board, process and power supply, we're talking about 30, 35, 40 degrees respectively. Which I imagine is well within normal bounds. The machine doesn't reboot under high loads, such as when I'm playing new games.

I've also installed the latest drivers for everything in the machine.

Sometimes the machine also takes about 2 mins to boot, while it would typically start up in about 30 - 40 secs. During this time the hard disk light would be flashing like mad, as opposed to more sporadic flickers during normal disk access.

So my question is do you think the system needs more than the 400w power supply (below). My hunch is telling me it's the power suppy.

I have tried quite a few things to try and fix this problem but it keeps happening. Perhaps 1 in every 10 boots.

I have been looking at this power supply, do you think it would be sufficient to pull this machine. That, and I consider putting another 500GB SATA drive in it, and in the future taking out the current graphics card and putting in an Nvidia 8800 with 768mb on board.

Anyway here is...My Current Rig

---

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Socket 939, 1MB, BOXED w/fan
Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium, nForce4 SLI,Socket -939, Super Cooling pipe, PCI-Ex16
RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-107-CS)
Graphics Card: PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
Optical: NEC DVD±RW burner, ND-3550A, 16x, Dual, Black OEM
Power: NorthQ 4775-400, ATX 400W Silent, 140mm Fan, 12-17dBA, 4xSATA, PCI-E, 20/24pin
HD: Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM
Keyboard: Saitek PZ08A Gamers Keyboard Backlit UK Black USB Retail
Mouse: Razer Diamondback Plasma 1600dpi Gaming Mouse Limited Edition - Retail (KB-013-RA)

uberpixie

Might be the fact that Noth Q PSUs are generally considered to be pure muck.

(As we all learn the hard way, NEVER skip on the PSU )

A good quality PSU slightly above 400W would power your machine perfectly.

If you are sure it's the PSU pick up a new seasonic 500W PSU.
(or other good quality brand name PSU)

That would be more than enough to power your present rig with the additions you are thinking of making

L31mr0d

get a new PSU, regardless of whats causing your problem, get a new PSU.

I think Gline has some good ones for sale on adverts atm. My first build had a NorthQ 400w in it, and within a week it had ruined a 6800Ultra I had bought (couldn't supply enough power on the PCIe connection as it was ATX not ATX2.0), I replaced it with a 400w Enermax and RMA'd the 6800Ultra and had no problems with my machine whatsoever.

PSU's by OCZ, Enermax, Seasonic and Fortron are usually good.

EDIT: oh and can you try booting without the razor plugged in? I've read that people where having similar problems with the razors plugged in during boot. You have to turn off something like USB legacy support in the BIOS afair

zilog_jones

Tagan are also good... I think. Well I have one anyway and I've had no trouble so far (except for it coming with a Schuko plug - damn you Komplett!).

ve

Right now that I have a few quid to spare, I want to get this hardware issue sorted. From recommendations I have received here, I have been looking at both OCZ & SeaSonic PSUs. A step up from the insufficient NorthQ unit that I currently have, I would imagine.

What I'm looking for is something quiet (as possible), that will easily drive the following rig. I'm also planning on putting in another one or two SATA drives in the next few months, plus I may also swap the x1800XT card for an nVidia 8800 series (no immediate plans for 2 x GPUs).

So at the moment I have my eye on:
OCZ GameXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
and
Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply

I'm leaning towards the OCZ unit, because from what I see the Seasonic one has all these optimizations for Intel (775) based machines, or am I reading too far in to something unimportant.

Do both, or at least the OCZ unit above, have all the necessary output connectors that I would need for the following rig.

Appologies for so many questions, but I don't want to get burnt again on the power supply.

Thanks a million

ve wrote:

My Current Rig

---

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Socket 939, 1MB, BOXED w/fan
Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium, nForce4 SLI,Socket -939, Super Cooling pipe, PCI-Ex16
RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-107-CS)
Graphics Card: PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
Optical: NEC DVD±RW burner, ND-3550A, 16x, Dual, Black OEM
Power: NorthQ 4775-400, ATX 400W Silent, 140mm Fan, 12-17dBA, 4xSATA, PCI-E, 20/24pin
HD: Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM
Keyboard: Saitek PZ08A Gamers Keyboard Backlit UK Black USB Retail
Mouse: Razer Diamondback Plasma 1600dpi Gaming Mouse Limited Edition - Retail (KB-013-RA)

8T8

Seasonic one has all these optimizations for Intel (775) based machines, or am I reading too far in to something unimportant

Definitely doesn't have optimizations of any sort a PSU is a PSU anything else is just marketing guff.

I'd go with the Seasonic (or Tagan) personally very high quality & quiet. It would have the necessary connections for the hardware you outline.

BadCharlie

Had both the psu your talking about and i rather the seasonic my self. Going by reviews seasonic also comes out tops.

ve

8T8 wrote:

Definitely doesn't have optimizations of any sort a PSU is a PSU anything else is just marketing guff.

That's what my gut was telling me, cheers bud.

astrofool

It's a problem with the mouse itself, and happens most often on nvidia motherboards as they use a different USB setup (OHCI instead of EHCI on intel/ATI/Via boards).

I suffer the same on my Habu and did on my copperhead (fine since being connected to a Dell). I find disabling PS2 Mouse support in the bios helps as well as using the latest drivers/firmware.

The power draw of a mouse is nothing.

ve

I believe you are absolutly right. The new power supply (600w as above) arrived in the post yesterday, so I put it in last night along with another SATA HD. All worked fine. This morning I booted the machine and the same problem reoccured, mouse turned on, then off during boot. When I went to enable in Device manager it turned on and then the system just rebooted.

astrofool, have you managed to completed get rid of the problem?. I would have thought that the mouse didn't draw much power itself, but that my machine was borderline coping on 400w with everything I had in it.

Thank you for your help