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PSU problem?

skittzle

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 15, 2005
Messages
1,563
Hello everyone. My brothers system has been having problems.

Crashes to desktop in games.
Crashes to reboot often.

This is a fresh install of xp. His system specs are:

s939 x2 3800
9800GT 1GB
2GB DDR2
1 optical
1 IDE HDD
1 SATA HDD
Antec 480w Trueblue <---

I am thinking it is the PSU. I have done a workup of watts needed and he comes in under the 480watt PSU he currently has.

Any ideas?
 
I'd like to suggest checking to see if the mobo has the latest bios update.
 
Have any of those components been recently added, or is this just out of the blue? Grab a can of compressed air and give the video card heatsink, cpu heatsink, and power supply a good dusting.
 
Thanks I will update his bios tonight.

Yes the video card is brand new. He is coming from a 7900GT.
 
Yeah, make sure he has the latest bios, and no overclocking of the CPU or memory. If that doesn't fix it, try to give the 9800 a go in another machine. Before you buy a new PSU I'd RMA the video card and see if a new replacement card doesn't fix it.
 
might want to run vram tests on the vidcard too...could be the memory chips are fried...
I'll try to find the url to a free app when I get home from work.
 
That PSU is an older style that has low 12v amperage output compared to the 5v and 3.3v rails, so it could be that the PSU just can't handle it (since all newer systems predominantly use 12v for most components).

But try a couple of other things first: download and run memtest86+ overnight to make sure the RAM is ok. Then uninstall all of the video and chipset drivers and reinstall them fresh. If you still get lockups, I would say the PSU is the potential weak spot.
 
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