boom!

DDRvsPC133 · July 3rd, 2002, 09:14 AM

Well, yesterday I received my Geforce4 Ti 4600 in the mail and promptly plugged her into my computer. I played for about 5 hours before my computer turned off. I sat there dumbfounded hoping perhaps a fuse blew or a plane full of kittens crashed into my powerline outside. Nope, my computer went boom. I couldn't turn her back on.

I gave the power supply a sniff and I thought I smelled alittle bbq, but who knows what kinda tricks my mind was playing on me at this point. I grabbed my brothers 300W power supply and plugged it in, and my computer seemed fine for the most part. No CPU, ram, or video card damage.

So what happened? Was my old 300W not enough to power 2 HDs, 2 CD-ROMs, a floppy, CPU fan, system fan, chipset fan and my new Geforce4 with two fans on it? Did the Geforce push it over the edge? If so, what Watt power supply would you recommend for my system?

Also, when I plugged my brother's power supply in, I couldn't get my 40GB slave to boot for the life of me. My computer could detect the master and my 2 CD-ROMs when I powered just those devices. But then if I powered my floppy, nothing was detected. This leads me to believe my brother's power supply just didn't have the juice to power everything. But could I be wrong? Could my 40GB HD possibly be dead from the power supply failure?

Thanks in advance for all responses

tobu · July 3rd, 2002, 09:20 AM

UM, i have no idea, but welcome and i'm really sorry to hear about the loss of your psu

muno · July 3rd, 2002, 09:28 AM

Perhaps she got bored with you only playing some plane games and decided it was to for other business, like washing the dishes, taking the carpets out etc.

300w should be enough, easily.
Certain it wasn't a power spike? Or the thing you plug your stuff into (you know, where you get all the power - what is it called?) isn't grounded or.. or..err..

I've had to take the power cord completely off for a while to get my machine back on if it was shutdown due too heavy oc'ing. Simply pressing the power button did nothing.
-M

dunbar · July 3rd, 2002, 10:06 AM

Slave would not boot, but would it spin up on your bros PS? If no spinup, maybe it is dead, inflicting deathlike symptoms in your original PS, and your bros PS is responding differently? If it spins up, well, then possible somebody in your PS left on a permanent vacation. Or when you tried your bros PS, did you maybe forget to connect power to the slave?? If so, ahem.... Maybe you gotta plug it in? You knew that....

FWIW, Sometimes the overcurrent setting will cause a trip while hot since heat affects the point where it will trip. Many overcurrent trip methods used today will cause total latch off of the PS, and will remain latched off for several minutes. Maybe this happened, and if so, get a different supply since the new card was all you changed and is likely drawing more current.

After you decide if the slave drive is still functional, I'd ask: feel adventurous, maybe take a risk? If so, plug the first PS back in... if it all runs again, then I'd get a 350W supply. Then I'd say "Welcome to the world of 'New upgrade cards draw more current than original cards'".

DDRvsPC133 · July 3rd, 2002, 10:21 AM

Thanks for the reply dunbar

I'm actually kicking myself because I didn't think to check if the HD was spinning. Thats what I get for celebrating my new geforce with a couple (several) beers.

Quick question though, what is this overcurrent you speak of? I saw a switch on the back of my PS and I wasn't sure what it did. Is this a fuse (or "latch") of some sort?

Thanks,
Steve

poopeyhed2 · July 3rd, 2002, 11:04 AM

What you described sounds familiar to my case. With my old generic powersupply, my sister used it, and somehow it rebooted, and wouldn't come back to life. And I swapped powersupplies and it worked again. I don't think your bro's powersupply is supplying enough juice which is why you slave is not being seen, since the TI4600 recommends havinga 350 watt powersupply.

dunbar · July 3rd, 2002, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by DDRvsPC133
Thanks for the reply dunbar I'm actually kicking myself because I didn't think to check if the HD was spinning. Thats what I get for celebrating my new geforce with a couple (several) beers.

Quick question though, what is this overcurrent you speak of? I saw a switch on the back of my PS and I wasn't sure what it did. Is this a fuse (or "latch") of some sort?

Thanks,
Steve

Sorry, this is going to be a technical answer.

In order to protect the PS from operating beyond what it was designed for, a circuit (or several circuits) is/are designed into the PS such that it/they determine current in a portion (or several portions) of a PS. If the current goes beyond some reference amount (chosen by design), the individual circuit will respond in such a way as to limit the current. Never have I seen a 'switch' controlled protection in a PC, though possible.

There you have overcurrent explained in a nutshell, as small of a nutshell as I care to limit my explanation to (I need this explanation to serve as a foundation for later on in this post, because there are so many eyes looking over this message).

Sometimes this protection is a one shot event with no possible repeats (a fuse cannot be repaired or reset, it must be replaced with another fuse, and may need a technicians inquisition to determine causes of it blowing).

Sometimes the protection is to latch off (the circuit will act in such a way that you would say the power was turned off). Give the circuit a few minutes without power, and they act as if nothing has happened.

Sometimes this protection is by a gradual reduction of the voltage, the amount of reduction always is based on load impedance (the more you draw for current by lowering the load impedance, then the protection circuit determines it will further reduce the voltage it will deliver). Simply return the load impedance to the level which is acceptable, all will be fine once again. This method is not a good method for PCs, because things can go bang if the voltage reaches too low a level. It has been used, is cheap to implement, so I can't rule out the possibility...

$12 Power Supplies simply cannot exist without some trade-offs, somewhere. Sigh.

Next question?

Emc2 · July 3rd, 2002, 11:51 AM

I have a Ti-200 on an AthlonXP setup with the same amount of drives that DDRvsPC133 has, except I also have a ZIP drive and a side case fan...all of this runs on a 300W power supply.

In Windows XP, while playing CounterStrike, the machine reboots sporadically.

I thought it had something to do with heat, since it would start happening every 10 minutes or so after an hour or so of playing. But the wierd thing is that it ONLY happens in counterstrike, and I play games that are MORE graphics intensive than CS, like Morrowind and Unreal. Any ideas here?

I did do a Windows Update that specifically addressed CS, but it didn't help, and niether did playing with detonator versions.

dunbar · July 3rd, 2002, 12:02 PM

Power Supplies respond to their load.. if the system reboots due to a static (unchanging) load, thats one thing. If the PC reboots because some graphics mode draws more power in one game compared to another game, well, that means the power supply needs to be bigger, because the card is still allowed to run in that mode - you are, in fact, expecting it to run in that other (rebooting) mode.

I'm not saying that a new power supply will always solve the rebooting problem. Heat can affect a CPU (or other IC) socket, etc. That effect is called thermal expansion.

Heat might be affecting the MOBOs' CPU supply which converts 3.3 into 1.06 for the CPU. The main Power Supply has very little impact over that other supply.

The same resolution in 2 different OSs may not draw exactly the same power from the main Power Supply, because other things on the mobo are used differently in other OSs. One OS might leave the whole PC drawing less power because of features not being used... thus, the heating is different, and the problem goes away.