Power Supply

[Cueless]

Hi, I needed to install a new power supply as recommended when I changed my
video card. It said the minimum requirement was 400W. I tried that and it
still would not work, so I got a 500W one ( the place I bought it at had
nothing in between ). Now early in the boot process I get a message saying
"Hardware monitor found an error. Enter Power Setup for details." When I go
to the Hardware Monitor in the bios there is a line that reads:

+12V Voltage and then 13.18V (which is flashing and red)

Then every once in awhile while booting the bios screen will pop up and say
something like CPU frequency at shutdown was wrong, the computer will now
boot in Safely, or something like that.

Is this going to damage the motherboard or CPU? It doesn't sound good.

It's an ASUS P4B266 mb. Thanks for any advice.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Did you plug all the cables back they way they were when the old power supply
was installed?

Since this is a Asus motherboard, do not connect the EZ Plug at the same time
as the standard P4 4 pin square plug. There should only the one of these
installed.

 

[Cueless]

Hi, I plugged everything in as it was, the 20 pin plug and the 4 pin P4
plug. I'm not even sure what EZ plug is. Thanks for any help.

 

[q_q_anonymous]

Hi, I needed to install a new power supply as recommended when I changed my
video card. It said the minimum requirement was 400W. I tried that and it
still would not work, so I got a 500W one ( the place I bought it at had
nothing in between ). Now early in the boot process I get a message saying
"Hardware monitor found an error. Enter Power Setup for details." When I go
to the Hardware Monitor in the bios there is a line that reads:

+12V Voltage and then 13.18V (which is flashing and red)

Then every once in awhile while booting the bios screen will pop up and say
something like CPU frequency at shutdown was wrong, the computer will now
boot in Safely, or something like that.

Is this going to damage the motherboard or CPU? It doesn't sound good.

It's an ASUS P4B266 mb. Thanks for any advice.

what kind of wrong behaviour from a PSU will permanently damage
components? I'm not sure.

But try a good make of power supply.
google for that , it's a common question.
I sue FSP, it's the only decent budget make . There are others that are
probably better, but those are more expensive. Antec is the classic
quality one.

13.8V may be bad but not so bad. Nevertheless, get a decent PSU

You really posted this in the wrong newsgruop. This has absolutely
nothing to do with windows xp.

Also, check the CPU speed in MHz, as reported by the BIOS. That is the
speed ti is running at. Is that what you purchased?
Nowadays, CPU is locked to a specific multiplier. So the FSB must be a
certain value for the CPU to run at the speed it was designed to run
at. Since the multiplier is locked. If the speed of the CPU is ok then
the FSB is ok.

It's possible that the FSB is too high and so processor speed too high.

I'm not expert, but maybe the wrong voltage is going to the CPU.
Change the PSU to a good make.

You could, as a test, in the meantime, use the old PSU in the MBRD, and
the 500W PSU to power your HDDs and CD drives, and see if it starts up.
To do that you'll have to jumper the green and black wires on the 500W
PSU - a paper clip in its 20 or 24 pin ATX connector jumpering the
green to any black.

I tried a PSU once, had no problems getting into windows. But while
doing so, I testing it with a multimeter. The voltages were jumping all
over the place.

 

[q_q_anonymous]

Did you plug all the cables back they way they were when the old power supply
was installed?

Since this is a Asus motherboard, do not connect the EZ Plug at the same time
as the standard P4 4 pin square plug. There should only the one of these
installed.

What is an EZ plug?

regarding what you call the P4 4 pin square plug. The correct name is
ATX 2x2. The AMD Athlon 64 also uses it. Not just the Intel P4.

Regarding the Asus EZ plug(don't just call it an EZ plug!!).. somebody
asked waht it was..

http://www.xbitlabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11115
"For running the ASUS off an older 20-pin power supply, ASUS provides a
feature called EZ-Plug, which lets you plug a standard four-pin
peripheral power connector into the motherboard next to the PCI-E
slots. ASUS says this will let the board operate with older 20-pin PSUs
when two videocards are installed." Quoted from Maximum PC

i.e. it's a 4 pin molex connector on the MBRD to power 2 PCIe cards.
Then it'd assist, but not as much as plugging a connector into each of
them.
Ideally, they'd want a PCIe connector in them. To get that from a 4 pin
molex, the adaptors take 2* 4 pin molex connectors. 'cos 2*12V are
necessary. That's just per card.

some posts by Paul in alt.comp.hardware.overclocking go into this. Of
course PSU voltages are relevant to overclockers.

 

[Cueless]

Hi, it is an Antec power supply and the processor is a 2ghz Pentium 4. Also,
could you suggest a good group to ask this question to? thanks a lot

 

[Guest]

Ask you question in : microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware

 

[q_q_anonymous]

Hi, it is an Antec power supply and the processor is a 2ghz Pentium 4. Also,
could you suggest a good group to ask this question to? thanks a lot

go to google groups, and google around and you'll find ones.

I would suggest alt.comp.hardware

 

[q_q_anonymous]

Hi, it is an Antec power supply and the processor is a 2ghz Pentium 4. Also,
could you suggest a good group to ask this question to? thanks a lot

you may have a bad Antec. (13.8V on the 12V rail) . My Antec PSU is
almost exactly 12V. Even good makes have duds - even dud models.

If that's an Antec, I might even try calling them. I'm guessing that a
quality PSU company will be concerned if they sell a faulty supply.

The 12V rail should be within range +- 10% i.e. +- 1.2V
5V rail should be +- 5% i.e. +- 0.25V

so even there, 13.2V is too high. You have 13.8 !!! And my Antec
typically has like 12.01V ! My FSP might say 11.99, 11.98, but not
raelly below 11.98. I test them backprobing with a multimeter - which
covers going into windows too (where in one case, a cheap make PSU I
had would go erratic in (12V) voltage- indicating it was bad).

My view is narrow.. there is more to testing a PSU than voltage, But a
bad voltage indicates bad PSU. And i've caught some bad ones before
they caused me trouble.
Sometimes voltage may be high, sometimes low, there are technical
reasons where that level has to be justified for it to be ok. But your
is probably still too high.

 

[Jonny]

Voltage, if accurate, is way to high. Along with mobo/cpu concernes, the
spin motors on the hard drives and CD/DVD devices also use this voltage.

If you want to get technical, its the amperage delivery capability of each
voltage leg that is important. Not the overall wattage delivery capability
of the power supply. For instance, a 400 watt power supply may be able to
supply much more amperage on the +5 volt leg than a 500 watt power supply.
The most important are +5V, +12V, and 3.3V. +5V is probably the most
important in my opinion. The negative voltages are seldom if ever used.
Overall wattage of a power supply is the result of each leg wattage
capability in a sum. The voltage of given leg times the amperage capability
equals the capability wattage of a given leg.

Check the actual voltage output of each voltage leg with a digital
multimeter with high impedance probe.

 

[q_q_anonymous]

Voltage, if accurate, is way to high.

Check the actual voltage output of each voltage leg with a digital
multimeter with high impedance probe.

how often do you find that the voltage reported by the BIOS or OS
software like SpeedFan or si sandra is Wrong. Or Too innaccurate? And
to what extent?
And have you ever seen cases where software reports a high or low
voltage, and the multimeter says it's ok?
A multimeter may be more accurate and more flexible(as in when you can
test). But, I find that if software picks it up as too high or too low,
then there is a problem.
<snip>

 

[Jonny]

Because with flaky, or high, or low voltages, you don't know if the
processed data from the pickup point for voltage is accurately represented
(possible motherboard problem) or that data processed properly for the user
to interpret. If all is as it should be, I agree with you.