New video card makes system hang, power problems?

[bluesman86]

Hi all.

I recently bought an Asus Geforce 6600LE 3D card. This is to replace my Geforce 3 Ti200. When i installed it in my computer i noticed that this card requires a power cable and my old one just sucked his power out of the AGP slot. So, i grabbed one of the free power cables that where hanging in my system and plugged it in.

The system boots up and sends me to Windows XP. I noticed that the system is somewhat unstable and shows some weird interface errors here and there. i installed the latest drivers, rebooted again and started 3D Mark 2003. But once i start a test that heavily relies on the card the system locks up and i hear one of my hard drives shut down and the PC reboots. This happens when i start any game that uses the 3D card.

I tried using the power cables that where in my hard drives (1 have 2 40GB HD's at 7200rpm) in the card and using the free cable in my hard drives. This caused the system not to reconise my primary drive so i juist put everything back again.

I tried booting with just one hard drive just for the hell of it, and suddenly everything works fine! The games run great and there are no more problems.

So my guess is it's the power supply that can't handle the power the card sucks. I'd like to know the opinion of the smart computer people here because i have no experience with power supplies at all.

[bluesman86]

By the way, my specs:

P4 1.7GHZ
512 MB Ram
2x 40GB @7200
Dvd player
Dvd burner
Sound card
Floppy drive

I don't know the wattage of my power supply. Where can i find this?

[Midknyte]

The wattage is printed on the psu itself. you might have to remove it to see the sticker.

you can use the PSU calculator to estimate what you need.
Tech Tools (http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=173743) - Miscellaneous: Power Supply Calculator

[bluesman86]

Well, the problem is that there is nowhere a brand or wattage printed. The Power Supply Calculator tells me that with the old card i should be using around 276w, and with the new card i use around 295w. I'm kinda suprised it's such a small amount. Since power supplies begin at 350w average. Granted, it's a supply that's 4 years old and my PC is from the first generation of P4's. Did they make below-300w power supplies in the past?

I noticed by the way, that the 2nd hard drive uses about the same amount of power the new card draws more over the old one. So it has to be the power supply right?

Is it normal that hard disks shut down when the power supply is overloaded?

[Midknyte]

Did they make below-300w power supplies in the past?

there are MANY psus lower than 300w, especially in OEM systems.

[bluesman86]

The PC i'm using now is a custom built one, using many "brand-less" components.

[bluesman86]

Just found out that i have a 300w power supply right now.

Something weird. I tried using the card again with only one disc. I hear the disc powering up and spinning around, yet the computer doesn't detect it. What can cause this? Can it also be my motherboard or something?

I'm getting confused here. I wanna buy a bigger powersupply, somewhere around 350w, but on the other hand i'm afraid that this won't solve the problem. But it's very plausable that this causes it right?

[Midknyte]

yup. even though your psu says 300w, it might not be able to handle the load if it's a generic box. 350W is pretty low nowadays.

check the return policy wherever you decide to get it.

[Rugor]

I'd recommend going with at least 400W these days (Actually I've been considering that the minimum for at least 5 years). Also, it can sometimes matter how the connectors are set up.

***** if the video card is connected to a molex on the same chain as the HD that could be a problem too. However, a bigger PSU is your best option.