• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Do nForce Systems Kill Power Supplies?

B

BadSweetums

n00b
Joined
Aug 13, 2008
Messages
7
I have been having serious problems with my nForce systems. My NF4 ultra (MSI Neo-4F) ate a MadDog 500W PSU and then killed a Silverstone 750W that I tried to power it up with. I replaced the MSI with a cheap Foxconn NF4 SLI board and it is working fine nine monthes later. BUT, I finally assembled my ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe using an FSP/SPI 640W PSU that I bought to build a dual Athlon socket A system (never built) and less than a year later the system failed to POST.

I broke out my handy Cooler Master PSU tester and found out that my +12V line measured +10.6 on the PSU tester. So, I dug up a cheap (but good) ePower 550W PSU.

The ePower's +12V measured 11.7. I installed it and came to this forum to ask.

Is it just me; or, do nVidia chipset/AMD CPU systems stress PSUs so much that 12 monthes might be the recommended service life of an AMD/nVidia system? :mad: :confused:

I think I need a new admin system. I can't afford to build a premium system if it is going to die of old age in 12 monthes. My P III systems all retired honorably when they became OLD and SLOW. As long as seven years after assembly.

What is the deal with this GREAT, NEW STUFF?
 
Last edited:
Unless there are faulty components in the mix, your motherboards shouldn't be killing PSUs. Since this has happened with more than one PSU and more than one motherboard, I think it's possible that the issue lies elsewhere. Do you have bad or unstable power in your area? Do you run your systems off of a UPS or a line conditioner? You might want to consider getting a line-interactive UPS and see if that helps anything.
 
Local power should be okay. I'm living in a five year old premium sub-division with buried utilities. I also use APC "500" UPSs for power conditioning and continuity.

The UPS still "seem" to be working fine; but, they are about four years old. Working fine defined as systems work reliably, UPS shows green light under load and beeps miserably when unplugged.

I ran out of money before I could afford enough hardware to really stress these systems. Two DVD burners, two hard drives and a 7900GTS video card shouldn't load a PSU much.

My A8N32 can't show its' face in public. I've only got one Geforce 8400 installed. This 8400 is so wimpy that it doesn't have an aux power input.
 
well i doubt a mad dog psu is gonna be any good for starters.......and quite frankly im not sure about epower either. just sounds like you have poor choices concerning psus to me.
 
Check the power draw at the wall to see if there is excess power being used.
If that is ok, I'd say you lucked out and had a bad run of PSUs.
Give it another shot, get a decent PSU like a Corsair HX.
 
I have an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe running my WHS, it's been powered by a Corsair 620HX for almost 3 years now. My media center is based on a MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum and has been powered by an Antec EA500 for the past 2 years. Aside from the crappy northbridge heatsink fan dying on both boards, both systems have been rocks.
 
I had the first nf4 system ever sold (Gigabyte K8NF-9) and a DFI NF4 Ultra-D, both running on very cheap PSU's and both have had no problems for several years.
 
Thanks for the reassurances. I guess that I am just having a streak of bad luck. I hope it is a short streak.

I'm torn between a highly rated (by jonny guru . com) OCZ, Corsair, or Fortron PSU for my next system. I'll be pulling the pieces together over a few months. OR, saving my cash for a quick series of purchases to build a slightly less than bleeding edge system.

Have a great day.
 
I personally have no love for Nvidia chipsets. The Nforce 2 was great and the NF4 wasn't bad but other then that you couldn't pay me to use a system based on one.

Now if it is the root of all your problems or not I really can't say.

What I can say is this is not the trend of new systems. Like you I have many old computers that have only been pulled from service due to lack of performance. But I also haven't seen any failure in the newer hardware that would confirm 12month life span for new systems. Though I will say the only system I had up and die on me recently was a few year old socket 754 NF4 system.

None of my C2D and C2Q builds have had any issues yet. I also haven't had any issues with any of my AMD builds that run AMD 7xx chipsets.

I haven't had a PSU I bought and installed in a system die in over 5 years either. I know people love the Corsair PSU but I have never tried one. I use to use nothing but Antec since I could get a good buy on case with PSU through them. But for the past 5 years now I have been using a lot of Seasonic units too. I have a S12 550 in my main rig for over 3 years now. Oh another thing I think I should mention is that I don't have any hands on experience with PSU over 600watt. I don't see the value in the large PSU like most around here seem too. Also the times I do pop in to this part of the forum the people with PSU problems seem to almost always have a PSU greater then 600watt. This has given me the impression that it is very heard to build a reliable PSU in the grater then 600watt range.

That said I select my hardware and build my systems knowing I don't want to go over 600watt. Potential PSU problems aside there is just more that can go wrong with a system that needs a high watt PSU. You have more hardware that can go bad causing problem. Not to mention added heat to deal with and if that heat isn't addressed you will reduce the life span of all associated hardware.
 
Last edited:
BadSweetums said:
I'm torn between a highly rated (by jonny guru . com) OCZ, Corsair, or Fortron PSU for my next system.
Click to expand...
Drop the FSP from the list, and post the specific models you're considering. If you're looking at one of the OCZ ProXStream PSUs, you probably wouldn't want one since they are LOUD.
 
as others have said, just buy a decent psu from Antec, Corsair, etc
 
yeah im sure others have used crappy psus and have been working fine but lets start off on the right foot and buy a quality psu........and quality psu doesnt have to be expensive either. post on the forums on what your next sytem will be and im sure we can give you good advice for a hopefully problem free build.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top