Do I have enough power?

M

Miles Escow

I built my own PC, which has been running fun with few problems until
just recently. It seems that installing more RAM has caused the
graphics card to lock up after just a few minutes of a 3D game. After
much searching in the forums, I am reasonably sure that this is power
related.

My system's specs are:

Antec Sonata case with 380w power supply (came pre-installed)
Gigabyte SINXP motherboard (F6 Bios)
Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz Socket 478 0.13 micron FSB533 processor
2 GB of 333Mhz DDR RAM (Samsung chips)(over 4 sticks - 2 of them newly
installed)
Gigabyte Maya II Radeon 9700 Pro Graphics card
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX soundcard
Seagate Barracuda SATA 80 GB 7200 RPM hard disk
Seagate Barracuda SATA 120 GB 7200 RPM hard disk
ASUSTeK 52/24/52 - CRW-5224A CDRW drive
ASUSTeK DVD drive
Linksys Wireless-G PCI Adapter WMP54G network card
Adaptec SCSI card
2 case fans
Zalman CNPS7000A-ALCU cooler for processor
Zalman ZM80C-HP & ZM-OP1 VGA Heatsink and Fan

All my drivers are up to date (Catalyst 4.5), nothing is overclocked.
Running Windows 2000. I have tried 3D Mark 2003 and I get a black
screen during the first test (the graphics card stops responding to
commands).

I have tired underclocking the graphics card and the test ran for a
bit longer but still crashed.

Can anyone tell me if I have enough power to be running all of this?
Would increasing the AGP voltage by 0.1v help?
What about making sure that the auxillary power for the graphics card
has nothing else attached to it (hard disks etc?)
My BIOS settings are set to 'top performance' should I set them back
to default?

Thanks for any help.
 
S

Sham B

Can anyone tell me if I have enough power to be running all of this?
Click to expand...

Try this;
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

You would be surprised how high the result can get. My computer's minimum is 390W, far higher than
the rated supply of your PSU. But, wait for it... yours comes to over 400W!!
Would increasing the AGP voltage by 0.1v help?
What about making sure that the auxillary power for the graphics card
has nothing else attached to it (hard disks etc?)
Click to expand...

Its not the voltage level that suffers when you get close to the limits of your PSU, but the noise.
Your computer is failing because the noise levels generated by the components are not being absorbed
by the PSU, and is being seen by other components. thats why your computer runs for a while, and
doesnt fail straight away. Overloaded PSUs dont output lower voltages, they return more moise -
there is a probablility that a high noise spike will crash something, and this incident takes time
to show itself (incidentally, the power requirements are highest at switch on, and your computer
gets past that). Increasing the GfX voltage might help (especially if you make sure nothing else is
on that line), but note that you will be still presenting a dirty power supply to the rest of our
computer, which increases the incidence of bad data, and shortens the life of your computer in
general. IMO, the thing that is crashing is not the GFX, but the CPU, memory, or motherboard - the
higher the frequency, the higher their susceptibility to noise.... and you are on 533FSB, which is
high.

I would suggest that it is far cheaper to just go out and get a *quality* 550W PSU than limit your
rig or workaround the problem.

Failing that, if you are an absolute cheapskate and are happy to risk a high quality and sensitive
set of components to a marginal and obviously overloaded PSU(!), removing a non critical component
might help. Rather than fix the poor noise problem, removing the source of the noise is the second
option. Fans are some of the biggest generators of noise (particulalry as they age). IF you can
make do without one, that might be the other option, for now at least, but I certainly wouldnt
recommend it - a quality PSU costs nothing in comparison to the rest of your rig!
Removing/disconnecting the CDROM (given that you also have a DVD to fall back on) might also do it,
but again, that is just reducing the problem to non critical levels, and is a fudge not a fix.

S
 
M

Miles Escow

Since this post I have done some test and finally got a bench score -
hoorah!

*I tried setting the bios to normal performance (as opposed to Top
performance) - 3DMark2003 stopped at the same place (the video card
stopped responding)

*I tried slightly underclocking the graphics card slightly (325 down
to 318) - 3DMark2003 stopped at the same place (the video card stopped
responding)

*I tried increasing the AGP voltage by 0.1v - 3DMark2003 stopped at
the same place (the video card stopped responding)

My first semi-succesful modification was achieved when I increased the
RAM voltage by 0.1v - 3DMark2003 ran for about a minute longer.

Realising that my problem was almost definitely related to my new RAM,
I now put the memory voltage back to normal and decreased the memory
frequency to 320 from 333. Finally I got a bench from 3DMark2003 of
5000. I don't think this is too bad for my setup but ideally I would
like the RAM to run at 333 as I do a lot of non-game related
(Photoshop) work that requires decent RAM (that's why I have 2 GB of
RAM).

So am I right in thinking that my new RAM is a tad on the cheap side
(its a mix of Samsung and no name, the no name being the new
addition)?

Can anyone give me some recommendations for new tests or should I just
get better RAM?
 
M

Miles Escow

After running Battlefield 1942 for about 15 minutes I had the same
problem as before. The videocard tried to reset and I had to reboot. I
have now tried to remove one DIMM and so only have 1.5GB of RAM. I ran
3DMark2003 again and now I get a lower score of 4940. No surprises
there, but it isn't a lot lower. Do you still think this is a power
problem? I will try running BF1942 again next.
 
S

Sham B

Yeah, seen that one. It gives just over 200W for my system, which is far too low. Looks like its
not considering the peak power (which is what would crash a computer) but is instead considering the
nominal only.

IMO, its a no-brainer... these days you cant go wrong with a quality 450-550W PSU whatever your
computer, assuming you want to build a stable and expandable machine.

S
 
A

Asestar

I think you can go for either Samsung or Crucial rams. They are decent
enough and have nice price.
 

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