Hardware PSU Problem

[sonic209]

alright so i have thid sapphire HD 4670 video card and a 250 watt PSU and when i installed the video card there was no video display and most likely its because of my PSU and i was wondering is there anything i can do to make it work other than having to buy a new PSU

 

[Diablo1123]

As far as I know, no.

Edit: Also I've heard you can damage your graphics card like that.

 

[gov78]

nope there reli isnt much u can do other than buy a new psu. they dont cost much anyway

 

[Scorpei]

alright so i have thid sapphire HD 4670 video card and a 250 watt PSU and when i installed the video card there was no video display and most likely its because of my PSU and i was wondering is there anything i can do to make it work other than having to buy a new PSU

Did you connect the card properly (4670 doesn't seem to need external power, maybe yours does?)? Did the fan for example on the thing spin up? Do you currently have some onboard graphics that you still need to disable? Did your PC give off any beeps when booting (other then 1 short beep / the beeps it normally gives)?

FYI: the 4670 pulls around 70W. Given your 250W PSU, it might indeed be short some W's. Try dissconnecting your hard drives (and any other things you don't 'need' on boot) and see if it posts then. If you use only your motherboard (+cpu + memory) and your videocard 250 should be enough I'd say. If it posts then keep adding your gear and see at which point it fails. Then disconnect all those things again and only attach the device (to the mainboard + cpu + mem + video) you attached last (just to make sure that it isn't defective). If it posts then, you know it's your PSU.

 

[sonic209]

alright well i found out that i didnt connect the monitor correctly so then i fixed that and yesterday the card was working and everything(i played some great games)but today in the afternoon it just stopped the computer will start up and everything but a little while after i log on the monitor would just goes black and i dont think the PSU is the problem anymore since it was working perfectly yesterday

 

[sonic209]

how do you disable an onboard graphics card this may solve the problem but yesterday i was playing with the HD 4670 and i dont remember disabling any onboard graphics card

 

[TheWingless]

Just so you know, if you go buy a psu, make sure it's reliable. Some may die in a couple of months if it's bad. I don't believe it is good to put so much stress on your PSU like that though... You might get the BSOD on heavy load too. Some good ones I was told are Corsair, OCZ, PC Power and Cooling, Silverstone, Seasonic, Enermax, Coolermaster, Gigabyte, Thermaltake.

Edit: Don't double post(but you may probably were thinking about auto-merging them), but to disable onboard graphics, I think you do it from the BIOS or something.

 

[sonic209]

Just so you know, if you go buy a psu, make sure it's reliable. Some may die in a couple of months if it's bad. I don't believe it is good to put so much stress on your PSU like that though... You might get the BSOD on heavy load too. Some good ones I was told are Corsair, OCZ, PC Power and Cooling, Silverstone, Seasonic, Enermax, Coolermaster, Gigabyte, Thermaltake.

Edit: Don't double post(but you may probably were thinking about auto-merging them), but to disable onboard graphics, I think you do it from the BIOS or something.

i got the BSOD after reinstalling because the video card wouldnt work or whatever the monitor wouldnt but nothing really happened after the BSOD it just restarted

 

[kobykaan]

250watt is WAYYYY too small for today's pc standards get at least a 500 watt to replace it!

bigger graphics cards and adding more drives and cards increases draw on the psu no doubt yours cannot handle the power it needs to draw so will be failing!

 

[Scorpei]

250watt is WAYYYY too small for today's pc standards get at least a 500 watt to replace it!

bigger graphics cards and adding more drives and cards increases draw on the psu no doubt yours cannot handle the power it needs to draw so will be failing!

Tru, but hey my server runs with a 90W power supply

. The thing of the matter is, as long as the machine doesn't want more there is no problem in having a smaller PSU. Hence my suggestion to watch the V's

. All in all the 4670 pulls a surprisingly low amount of power, considering the 250 of the GTX260/280

. If you add it all up it could be that his 250 is enough (say at 65% efficienty that gives you 162W):

70 for the 4670
65 for the CPU (assuming he has somekind of recent proc as in C2D or maybe an AMD Athlon X2)
=135 which leaves roughly 30 for HD and such.

Granted though it is rather cutting it

. My machine currently pulls around 100W which is when it is already on and idling on the desktop / browsing. e4500 & 7900GT on a p45 chipset.

 

[sonic209]

250watt is WAYYYY too small for today's pc standards get at least a 500 watt to replace it!

bigger graphics cards and adding more drives and cards increases draw on the psu no doubt yours cannot handle the power it needs to draw so will be failing!

Tru, but hey my server runs with a 90W power supply

. The thing of the matter is, as long as the machine doesn't want more there is no problem in having a smaller PSU. Hence my suggestion to watch the V's

. All in all the 4670 pulls a surprisingly low amount of power, considering the 250 of the GTX260/280

. If you add it all up it could be that his 250 is enough (say at 65% efficienty that gives you 162W):

70 for the 4670
65 for the CPU (assuming he has somekind of recent proc as in C2D or maybe an AMD Athlon X2)
=135 which leaves roughly 30 for HD and such.

Granted though it is rather cutting it

.

well then why wont it work on my PC,could i just like unplug my dvd drive so the video card will work and plug it back in when i need to use the drive

 

[Scorpei]

Well you said it worked once right? Try what I suggested to you a while back, simply try using the machine with no HDs attached (and such). Simply build up from there if it runs at that point. It could be that the 250 is really simply running short (30W really isn't much you know though 65% efficiency might be a slightly low guestimate). Deattaching things from the machine should help. Naturally though components that are needed at least are the CPU, motherboard and videocard. Try those, and then those in combination with your boot HD only.

Also as for your other question to disable ur onboard vid card. There should be an option in your BIOS saying something like:
Onboard VIDEO [ENABLE/DISABLE] or
Primary video adapter [PCI/PCI-E/*]
Then select PCI-E (probably)

You might also need to disable it in windows (friend of mine had that problem).

 

[sonic209]

Well you said it worked once right? Try what I suggested to you a while back, simply try using the machine with no HDs attached (and such). Simply build up from there if it runs at that point. It could be that the 250 is really simply running short (30W really isn't much you know though 65% efficiency might be a slightly low guestimate). Deattaching things from the machine should help. Naturally though components that are needed at least are the CPU, motherboard and videocard. Try those, and then those in combination with your boot HD only.

Also as for your other question to disable ur onboard vid card. There should be an option in your BIOS saying something like:
Onboard VIDEO [ENABLE/DISABLE] or
Primary video adapter [PCI/PCI-E/*]
Then select PCI-E (probably)

You might also need to disable it in windows (friend of mine had that problem).

it already is on PCI and im going to try to run the video card by removing the dvd drive

just to let you know here are some of my specs
Processor:AMD Athlon X2 4800
Optical DriveVD/CD Burner with Lightscribe Technology
Memory:3G
Hard Drive:320GB
Graphics:NVIDIA Geforce 6150 SE Graphics(onboard)

EDIT:is there anyway i can just turn off the optical drive without having to unplug it

 

[kobykaan]

Well you said it worked once right? Try what I suggested to you a while back, simply try using the machine with no HDs attached (and such). Simply build up from there if it runs at that point. It could be that the 250 is really simply running short (30W really isn't much you know though 65% efficiency might be a slightly low guestimate). Deattaching things from the machine should help. Naturally though components that are needed at least are the CPU, motherboard and videocard. Try those, and then those in combination with your boot HD only.

Also as for your other question to disable ur onboard vid card. There should be an option in your BIOS saying something like:
Onboard VIDEO [ENABLE/DISABLE] or
Primary video adapter [PCI/PCI-E/*]
Then select PCI-E (probably)

You might also need to disable it in windows (friend of mine had that problem).

it already is on PCI and im going to try to run the video card by removing the dvd drive

just to let you know here are some of my specs
Processor:AMD Athlon X2 4800
Optical DriveVD/CD Burner with Lightscribe Technology
Memory:3G
Hard Drive:320GB
Graphics:NVIDIA Geforce 6150 SE Graphics(onboard)

EDIT:is there anyway i can just turn off the optical drive without having to unplug it

no! you have to unplug it otherwise its still using power!

@Scorpei you will know that servers dont need a graphics card either or a burner or a massive processor anything else much really apart from hard drives and a board and even get away with a low mhz processor to run from they don't even need a screen hence 90w psu will suffice just fine

start adding big graphics cards dvd/cd burners monitors etc it will obviously draw more power moreso if they monitor is connected to the back of the tower for power and not direct to mains socket! (oddly enough a lot of machines still have this plug through on the psu for monitor power!

Under load such as games playing etc will draw more ... you can add it all up as much as you want ...but every systems different they will all draw different amounts under different strain, different usage!

An AMD Athlon X2 4800 and a 320gb drive on their own will still draw a lot from a tiny 250watt PSU even without doing a great deal else!

so check ...is your monitor/screen connected to the mains direct or looped through your tower?


400 - 500 watt seems overkill for an average system but it covers you plenty for adding more stuff later

 

[sonic209]

Well you said it worked once right? Try what I suggested to you a while back, simply try using the machine with no HDs attached (and such). Simply build up from there if it runs at that point. It could be that the 250 is really simply running short (30W really isn't much you know though 65% efficiency might be a slightly low guestimate). Deattaching things from the machine should help. Naturally though components that are needed at least are the CPU, motherboard and videocard. Try those, and then those in combination with your boot HD only.

Also as for your other question to disable ur onboard vid card. There should be an option in your BIOS saying something like:
Onboard VIDEO [ENABLE/DISABLE] or
Primary video adapter [PCI/PCI-E/*]
Then select PCI-E (probably)

You might also need to disable it in windows (friend of mine had that problem).

it already is on PCI and im going to try to run the video card by removing the dvd drive

just to let you know here are some of my specs
Processor:AMD Athlon X2 4800
Optical DriveVD/CD Burner with Lightscribe Technology
Memory:3G
Hard Drive:320GB
Graphics:NVIDIA Geforce 6150 SE Graphics(onboard)

EDIT:is there anyway i can just turn off the optical drive without having to unplug it

no! you have to unplug it otherwise its still using power!

@Scorpei you will know that servers dont need a graphics card either or a burner or a massive processor anything else much really apart from hard drives and a board and even get away with a low mhz processor to run from they don't even need a screen hence 90w psu will suffice just fine

start adding big graphics cards dvd/cd burners monitors etc it will obviously draw more power moreso if they monitor is connected to the back of the tower for power and not direct to mains socket! (oddly enough a lot of machines still have this plug through on the psu for monitor power!

Under load such as games playing etc will draw more ... you can add it all up as much as you want ...but every systems different they will all draw different amounts under different strain, different usage!

An AMD Athlon X2 4800 and a 320gb drive on their own will still draw a lot from a tiny 250watt PSU even without doing a great deal else!

so check ...is your monitor/screen connected to the mains direct or looped through your tower?


400 - 500 watt seems overkill for an average system but it covers you plenty for adding more stuff later

well i dont know exactly what your talking about but my monitor is connected to the pc and after i connect the HD 4670 the monitor has to be plugged into the video card to work and it works through DVI

 

[Scorpei]

I think he means to ask if your monitor has it's own connection to the electric system or if it is connected to power via your computer tower (PSU). The usefulnes of that is that they then turn on at the same time (aka 1 button for both things). Aside from that it shouldn't put strain on the PSU.

Aaaanyway, your proc is 65W rated

.

All in all 250W remains rather low, either try it with less things or simply test it with a bigger PSU. Pretty mucht he conclusion of this thread

.

Edit: The low power usage of my server is pretty much because I underclock it a little, but it is hardly 'efficient' hardware though. It's pretty much my system from 3 steps back now planted someplace in the closet to run VoIP

.

 

[sonic209]

its connected to the electric system and so basically the video card will work without the optical drive right

 

[Scorpei]

its connected to the electric system and so basically the video card will work without the optical drive right

Possibly, if that shaves off that few Ws that you are short. Try it I suppose

. De attach it and start up the system. Then try gaming a bit (push your system). If it is unstable you'll notice

.

But what does it do WITH it attached anyway? Does it even POST or what?

 

[sonic209]

its connected to the electric system and so basically the video card will work without the optical drive right

Possibly, if that shaves off that few Ws that you are short. Try it I suppose

. De attach it and start up the system. Then try gaming a bit (push your system). If it is unstable you'll notice

.

But what does it do WITH it attached anyway? Does it even POST or what?

if you mean the video card well after i log into windows vista a little while after the monitor just goes black and sometimes the BSOD will come up(which scared me a litle bit so i removed the video card) but then it just restarts

 

[Scorpei]

So the system works but it is just unstable. Then with the card removed the system only reboots (and is thus non-functional)... did you remove the card while the system was on or sumthin :S?

Sounds bad

. The first bit sounded very much like the PSU was the culprit, but the second bit is rather weird... sounds like a settings problem in windows or something is defective. Honestly if the system works without vid card but crashes random with it (could be the card itself is defective) it really seems like the PSU simply isn't pulling it.