Possible PSU problem?

[Uncle Sick]

Alright - since I got my new system together:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Radeon 9800 pro 128mb
1gb RAM
120 gb SATA HD

I am having graphics problem now - frequent crashes in games, blacked out screens, artifacts followed by complete freeze-ups just to name a few problems.
All graphics related.

Now I tried everything I could think of already - un- and reinstalled the Catalyst drivers, checked directX, checked BIOS settings and what have you but the problem still persists..

The card is fine, tested it on my old PIV shuttle system... now after some reading up on 9800/AMD problems I figured that I might simply have a PSU problem. I run the system on a 350W supply but before I dish out money on a 500W supply I'd like to get some confirmation first.

Thanks in advance for your help, guys.

 

[Jonty]

Hi Uncle Sick

It could be a power problem, certainly having less power than it needs can lead to corruption and crashes. Does your Radeon 9800 Pro require a direct connection to the PSU (i.e. is there a wire running from your PSU to a molex connector somewhere on the card?)? Not all Radeons do, and those which don't probably rules out a power problem.

Perhaps the best thing to do is uninstall your drivers, removing any remnants with Driver Cleaner or the likes. Reboot and then reinstall the latest Catalyst 5.4 drivers from ATI. I know you said you've done this, but I don't know if you'd thoroughly removed all the old drivers or if you were using a modified driver package like the Omega Drivers. If you've performed any BIOS updates or unlocks on the card, try and reverse them and if you're overclocking the card try restoring to the default factory settings. Drivers and performance mods can be root of many problems.

If problems exist try reading FiringSquad's PSU Guide which explains the workings of the PSU as well as telling you how to calculate what kind of PSU you'll need depending on your system spec.

Finally, how long did you test the card in another system? The faults you describe could well be a faulty card.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. I presume your BIOS settings are set to the optimised defaults? Your RAM timings, for example, if set too low could cause instability.

 

[Danya]

Jonty,
The 9800 pro does indeed require a separate molex.

Sick - make sure the power wire to the card is only being used for the card, not chained off to other devices. If you can, check the voltage the PSU is outputting while powered up and under load (a game or 3d mark is suitable). This assumes you have a multimeter to measure with though.

 

[Jonty]

Thanks for that, Danya, I couldn't remember when I was writing my post

Hope it gets sorted, Uncle Sick.

Kind Regards

 

[Gray]

Ive had a few problems like that, all of which have now been sorted..

Firstly i got a new Soundcard (Audigy 2) and at the same time i lowered my FSB..

One of those stopped system crashes/game crashes as well

 

[Fana]

Might well be your ram memory also - i had similar problems with my machine when it was newly built (games would crash the comp or reboot it etc) and it was caused by the ram beeing of low comaptibility with the motherboard. I switched to another brand of ram and it worked smooth. Try removing one stick of ram and run with that and see if same things happen, then try with the other stick, also try them in different slots so you know it isnt the motherboard thats faulty. Can also try http://www.memtest86.com/ or http://hcidesign.com/memtest/ or some such to test the ram.

To be honest, 350w should be plenty enough for your system unless you have lots of chassi fans and/or hd's and such.

 

[Uncle Sick]

1. I had the card running for several hours in my old PIV system, replicating situations where my new Athlon system would crash.

2. I did use the driver removal tool and got the latest Cat drivers (not the Omega ones) - same drivers where installed on my old system just to make sure.

Danya's suggestion seems possible - my SATA drives is chained off the graphics card and I seem to have noticable graphics lag whenever the HD operates... so off to do some replugging and I'll keep you guys posted.

Thanks for all the help and input - I do appreciate it.

 

[Danya]

I had one of my HDDs intermittently die before, rewiring to reduce load on the specific cable it was on fixed it - it's definitely a bad idea to load too much stuff off one cable.

 

[Uncle Sick]

Hrm... re-wiring didn't do the job. Still crashes when I try to run 3D Mark 05 (it crashes halfway into the first test).

Memory test showed no errors (running two sticks of Corsair, which is approved for my AV8 Deluxe board). I am very, very sure that it's not the graphics card (since 3D Mark 05 runs fine on the other machine when I swap cards).

You guys sure that 350W is fine? Or is it just sucking up more power than my current PSU can handle if cpu/gpu loads go up and that's the reason for the crash? That's what one of my co-workers thinks (guy is a prick, tho..hehe).

 

[Jonty]

Hi Uncle Sick

350W should be fine, but like all things to do with computers it depends. Shuttle PSUs, for example, are very well designed and with their form factor mean their low wattage ratings can still keep up with higher-rated desktop PSUs. Quality does come into play with PSUs regardless of form factor, though. A cheap 600W PSU could well perform unreliably incomparison to a quality 400W PSU. Did you existing PSU come with your case or did you purchase it separately?

Kind Regards

 

[Ch3tan]

Only sure way to test the memory is by using different sticks, or those sticks in a different board. If that isnt possible, why not try one stick at a time?

 

[Embattle]

Not all PSUs are the same, even if they are rated at the same wattage.

 

[Uncle Sick]

PSU came with the case... no-name (at least I didn't see any brand name on it).
Any suggestions on good PSU brand names?

 

[SawTooTH]

I swear by Enermax but they be expensive. I had a 500Watt for my rig. That stopped a lot of problems.
Id never use a case bought PSU, especially if I had bought everything else top quality.

 

[Embattle]

Enermax
Zalman
Antec

 

[Danya]

My Tagan is a solid bit of kit tbh. Manages to run my beast of a comp which is quite impressive.

 

[.Wilier.]

It really is worth taking the time to read the article that Jonty pointed to. They nicely explain the loadings that different pieces of equipment use, and also what different qualities of power supply provide.

In a nutshell, they suggest that cheap, generic PSU's really dont supply enough power on the +12v rail to support an XP2000 based machine, even some of the cheaper 400watt PSU's werent up to the job.

As Embattle and Danya both say, Antec, Tagan, Zalman and Enermax are all very good PSU's well capable of supplying sufficient power to run a decent system.

 

[Uncle Sick]

What about this one? I like the modular, prevent-clutter idea and I've got the money to spare right now.

 

[Ch3tan]

That looks great. If your building a chav pc. Wouldn't look out of place in a souped up Nova.

 

[Embattle]

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/ultraxPSUreview/

 

[Uncle Sick]

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/ultraxPSUreview/

Thanks for the link, Embattle - I've also done some more review checking at work and been quite impressed with the UltraX so far.

And yes, my new machine is glowy and it's a glossy black case, blue glowing piece of lame show-off hardware.
But every system I built in the past was a pretty plain sight... I just wanted to go crazy for once... (and yes, the neon light is never turned on ).

Oh, one thing - I keep seeing SATA connectors mentioned. I happen to have a SATA drive in my new machine (since I was told it was so much faster than a regular IDE though I haven't noticed alot of difference really) the way mine is set up is SATA cable connected to motherboard and powercable from PSU connected to SATA drive. Now since I have no prior experience with SATA drives... is that the proper set-up or have I gotten something wrong? I am not that sure of my 1337 mad h4xx0r computer building skills anymore.

 

[Ch3tan]

Yeah thats the right setup.

Looking at the review for that PSU, it doesnt come with SATA power connecters yet, they will post them to you once they are available -maybe worth checking it out before you spend your cash.

 

[Uncle Sick]

Oh - I found a huge thread on the problem... just in case anyone has the same kind of problem with an ATI card: it looks like the quality of your PSU really might be the cause of all evil.

 

[Uncle Sick]

Hrm... sorry for bugging everyone here again but I just checked my IRQ settings:

I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7 PCI bus
I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7 Direct memory access controller

I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF RADEON 9800 PRO

IRQ 21 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ 21 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ 21 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ 21 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ 21 VIA USB Enhanced Host Controller

Memory Address 0xE8000000-0xFAFFFFFF VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
Memory Address 0xE8000000-0xFAFFFFFF RADEON 9800 PRO

I/O Port 0x0000E000-0x0000EFFF VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
I/O Port 0x0000E000-0x0000EFFF RADEON 9800 PRO

IRQ 16 RADEON 9800 PRO
IRQ 16 VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller

Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF PCI bus
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF RADEON 9800 PRO

I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB RADEON 9800 PRO

Hmmm... should I try assigning the card it's own IRQ?
*sighs*

I disabled fast-write already but that doesn't seem to work... if you check the link in my earlier post you'll find that the popular solution for this problem is either replacing the PSU or changing IRQ settings.

 

[Danya]

With ACPI sharing IRQs doesn't matter so much as it used to. You can give it a shot but YMMV.

 

[Gray]

I bought a new PSU (Enermax 400) but it didnt solve the random crashes either in game, or in windows.

I eventually gave in and tried lowering the FSB et voila, not a problem since then... The memory i have is so very dodgy, and its 400mhz but i think i have to run it at 333 - Although ive not reset pc in a good long time

 

[Uncle Sick]

I bought a new PSU (Enermax 400) but it didnt solve the random crashes either in game, or in windows.

I eventually gave in and tried lowering the FSB et voila, not a problem since then... The memory i have is so very dodgy, and its 400mhz but i think i have to run it at 333 - Although ive not reset pc in a good long time

Brzzg.. ! Well, I just ordered a 500W Ultra PSU... if it doesn't fix the problem, I'll mess around with the FSB or get rid off Smartgard and lower the AGP settings to 4x.

 

[Dr_Weasel]

Where did you order from Uncle? Im in the market for a new PSU and that one looks quite spinky!

 

[Danya]

Obviously the real solution is to burn it all. ;>

 

[Uncle Sick]

Where did you order from Uncle? Im in the market for a new PSU and that one looks quite spinky!

www.tigerdirect.com - they have a link for UK customers.
I can recommend tigerdirect, never had a problem with them and their prices are usually good (at least here in the US).