Antec NeoPower 480 enough?

[sitheris]

Thinking about adding a second XFX 7800 GT to my system, along with a new SLI mobo such as the A8N-SLI Premium.

Will my NeoPower 480 be able to handle it? What about when I overclock?

 

[MrE]

A month ago I would have said "yes" to your question. Now, I am not so sure. Let me give you some background. About a month ago, my aging 250Gb WD drive was on its way out and I knew it. So when it went, I ordered a new drive. No biggie. Last night, I powered on my machine and booted to Windows fine. Then the desktop started acting wierd (things locking up, etc..) so I shut the machine down and rebooted. Couldn't get back into Windows upon restart. So I remove the side panels and notice that the fans on my 7800GT's aren't spinning (Zalman 770's). Hmm, so I figured why I was getting the lockups. Put the 3 pin fan header to 4pin molex on another rail and they spun up. (whoohoo!) Boot back into windows, and now my new drive isn't being seen by XP. Damn...

Go into Disk Administrator and notice it shows my drive as offline (setup as dynamic btw) and I try to re-activate it. Nope, cannot read drive table info. Oh no, my data is hosed on that drive. Only option to revert back. Done and reformated, blah blah blah, copy files over. Reboot machine, and no hard disk?!! WTF?!! Power it off, remove the SATA power connector and swap, and the drive is seen and all is happy. Now mind you (thanks for bearing with me) this system has been running pretty flawless for 3 months, but now it looks like I am running into voltage issues with my NEO. 3 pin to 4pin Molex connectors can go bad, but moving it to another rail and it works? hmm... Hard disk dissapears and then comes back? Hmm, sounds to me more and more that the Neo cannot handle my setup. And mind you it isn't overclocked but bone stock.

I am reading more and more online that the NEO's 12v rails tend to run a bit on the low side, so playing into my anxiety over this current issue I ran into, I'd have to say "NO" to running SLI. Could be an isolated incident, but then again, I am pretty careful with my power plumbing so take my point of view for what its worth.

-E

 

[sitheris]

Did you have any success by removing one of your 7800gt's?

 

[MrE]

Well, before running this in an SLI configuration, it had been flawless even with the water cooling setup I had running. So I think that the fact that the PSU doesn't come with two PCI-e connectors out of the box might be a clue as to the flakyness. Not sure though. I'd sure like to have a solid answer to this. I'm toiling over dropping the $$ on a PC Power and Cooling PSU.

Its funny though but its been stable again for the past two days. I think though at this point I am going ot err on the side of caution and replace it.


-E

 

[apHytHiaTe]

I don't want to threadcrap or highjack, but I have the neo480 as well, and I just got a DFI expert board and a x1900xt. I am concerned that my poor little antec will sputter and explode into oblivion when I power it on... Is this a justified fear?

The total setup will be DFI-Expert, x1900xt, 2x1gig G.Skill HZ's, Creative X-Fi, AMD 3800 x2, and a 320gig WD sata, and the nec 3520 dvd drive.

 

[MrE]

I don't think that will be an issue. From my experience, its more to do with SLI situations and unbalanced 12v rails, but thats speculation on my part. You should have enough power with that setup.

-E

 

[apHytHiaTe]

I don't think that will be an issue. From my experience, its more to do with SLI situations and unbalanced 12v rails, but thats speculation on my part. You should have enough power with that setup.

-E

Thank you! I think I'll be courageous and try 'er out!