Power supply failing?

D

drdeutsch

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 17, 2004
Messages
3,775
I recently started receiving this error. My system is as follows

Athlon X2 4400+
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
eVGA Geforce 6800 Ultra
2x512 OCZ RAM
2x74Gb Raptors in SATA RAID
2xDVD-RW, 1 IDE, 1 SATA (the Sata was the Plextor PX-716SA, just added).
1x Sony FDD
Antec Neo480

The only changes I've made lately have been the addition of the FDD and the Plextor DVD drive.

In addition to the Machine Check Exception error, my computer is now hanging on restart. That is, it will shut down, but not all the way. It won't restart. Even shutting down doesn't shut down the computer all the way, as the fans never stop spinning.

Everything I've read on here seems to indicate a hardware failure and, given my symptoms, a power supply failure.

I'm not overclocking.... could the Neo480 be maxing out?
Also, my temps are running about 47C. A little high, but I could probably organize my cables a bit better.

I'm running memtest now, just to make sure the RAM is okay.
So, too much heat or not enough power?

Thanks,
drdeutsch
 
Anybody?

I do plan on upgrading toa 7800, which I hear consumes less power.
Should I also plan on upgrading the psu? I checked with Asus Probe, and all the voltages look fine, except for the Vcore, which is just a little low, but still within 10%, and "OK" according to probe.

Today, my Dell 1905 started flickering. Doesn't seem to be any reason to it. Just surfing the web with Firefox and it flickers on and off intermittently.

So, is this a power supply problem? A video card problem?
Any help is appreciated. Thanks,
drdeutsch
 
I would try taking the plextor out of the system and see what happens. Not sure why but I have seen several cases where some of the new optical drives can be in conflict with the system. Might as well pull the floppy too while you are in there just to be sure.

I ran into the flickering problem once or twice on an HP and a Dell, both machines were using and older nVidia video card, never could fix it other then swapping out cards. There have been several driver updates since then which might also cure the problem

Luck
 
I have almost the exact same system you do and I'm having the same problem. However, my problem only started once I added the Plextor drive. I've read that if you uninstall the Nvidia IDE driver the problem should go away. I'm going to try it tonight so I'll let you know how it goes.
 
I found this on another forum - it may help

I'm not sure if this applies to your situation because I'm not familliar with your motherboard, but my PX 716SA was crashing my system anytime a disc was inserted when connected to the nVidia SATA ports. Switching the connection to the silicon image SATA RAID port on my A8N-SLI solved this problem.....
__________________
 
Well according to my calculations using PSU Calculator (see other threads for link), your current power demands under load are:

3.3v 5v 12v
Amps needed 13.7 13.6 26.1
Watts needed 45 68 314
Total watts 3.3+5v / All 113 427

Add the 7800 and it goes up a little to 438 watts. So if you go with a "single" 7800GTX you are ok. Go SLI and you need a new PSU.
 
Thanks for the info. Keep me posted about whether removing the Nvidia IDE drivers works. Otherwise, I'll try connecting it to the Silicon Image Sata ports.

The problem has gone away, so I'll probably hook my floppy drive up again. I no longer get the "machine check exception errors", so that's good. My monitor is still flashing, but that's a video card problem, I'm pretty sure.

Anywho, keep me updated as to whether removing the Nvidia IDE drivers works.
Thanks,
drdeutsch
 
I just heard back from Plextor and here is what they said:

Following are some of the things that users have used to fix this problem:

1. “I disconnected the drive and reinstalled the motherboard chipset drivers. I rebooted a couple times and then reconnected the drive.”

2. “… only issue you will find with this drive is that on all of the nForce 4 chipsets. these drives will not function correctly unless you go into the device manager under the hardware tab, after clicking properties on My Computer, and select your ide controller that the optical drive is on {ADMA Controller}. Once you find it unselect the BIOS speed selection and manually set it to PIO mode. It will work like a charm afterwards.”

3. “The only remedy I could find was doing a clean install of windows and then installing the Nvidia drivers without installing the Nvidia IDE drivers (i did this by simply deleting the ide driver folder within the driver install package). Clean windows install w/o Nvidia IDE drivers is the way to go.”

4. “I tried the drive on a SATA Raid instead of the regular SATA ports. That worked.”
 
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