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Too small power supply?

O

oboyco

Gawd
Joined
Apr 11, 2005
Messages
533
I just bought an ATI 2600xt Gigabyte passive cooled vid card. I installed it and booted and installed the catalyst drivers. On reboot I got all kinds of artifacting and then total shutdown. I am assuming this is a power supply problem, ie. not enough power. The reason I went with this card is because of it's low power consumption.

Asus M2A-VM
ATI 2600xt
WD 320gb ys
2 Lite on DVD players
Enlight 350watt PSU, made by Delta I believe
ATI 550 TV tuner
AMD 3800X2 Windsor

Is my PSU inadequate, or do I have the rails not balanced properly, if there is such a thing?
 
Just looked at my PSU nameplate rating, 10amps on 12v V1, 15amps on 12v V2. Too bad it wasn't the other way around, as I figured with the CPU and vid card, the draw is around 12 amps. So this morning I just ordered a Corsair VX550W from buy.com for around $88. After some moderate research here and there, this seems to be a pretty nice unit for the money.
 
I highly doubt it's a PSU problem. The 2600xt isn't exactly a power house. It doesn't even need an external power source (atleast the ones I've come across don't. I think you just got a bad card.
 
RamonGTP, tell me if I'm wrong, but don't the CPU, and power for the PCI
slots run off the v1 rail? The 2600xt from what I have read draws around 75 watts with no external power source, and the CPU under full load will draw around 65 watts, totaling 140 watts divided by 12 volts is 11.6 amps, therefore, overloading my v1 rail rated at 10 amps.

I don't know how much power my TV tuner draws, but I am assuming not much.
 
Unless the documentation says so or the connectors are labeled, there is no way to tell exactly which rails are feeding what. There are no standards afik that dictate which rails should go to which devices, it's pretty much at the discretion of the PSU manufacturer.
 
I'm just going by the tutorial by Ice Czar in the sticky thread PSU buying guide, "How to buy a PSU"


"Figure the Individaul Draw on each +12V Rail
If you have a modern board, or if you have a server\workstation
its very likely that you will be looking at PSUs with more than one +12V rail
so we need to look at how much draw there is on each of the rails
it breaks out like this for an ATX12V v2.0(1) supply
1. Add the +12V1 up
CPU, mobo, +12V power for PCI cards and +12V power via the AGP slot
2. Add the +12V2 up
everything else, including the Auxillary Power to the Video Card(s)
(this is where you pull up the Video Card Chart we used above)"

So I am assuming that the 24 pin mobo connector and the 4 pin CPU connector powering the mobo are originating at the 12V v1. Everything else, ie. HDD's, external power for vid cards etc originate from the 12V v2.


To be truthful, I never did understand the need for more than one 12V rail. That was one of many reasons for choosing the Corsair vx550w rated at 41 amps.
 
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