power supply causing lockups?

[Nathan Phoenix]

The problems I discussed in my previous thread (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6708) have not been solved yet. One of my friends suggested that the issue may lie in a power supply that is too weak. I wanted to run this by those that are more tech savvy than myself and see if they thought this could be a problem.

My power drawing hardware consists of:
Asus A7N8X-deluxe
Athlon XP 2500 (barton core/333mhz bus)
2x 512 meg Kingston Hyper-X memory (cas 2.0, pc 2700)
1 gainward geforce 4 4200 ti w/ 128 megs video memory
1 western digital 120 gig HD.
1 plextor 16x4x32 CD-RW
1 creative labs DXR2 DVD-rom (dvd-5x)
3 active USB devices - MS keyboard, laser mouse & force feedback 2 joystick.
5 case fans with 3 LED's each. one of these is built into the power supply
1 case fan with no LEDs. this is built into the power supply.

fire wire, serial, parallel, and serial ATA support are all disabled in the system BIOS.

The power supply is a Turbolink 420 watt switching power supply - model #CWT-420-ATX-12V.


My problem, if you haven't read the other thread, are crashes in D3D games ONLY. The screen will fill with colored gibberish, almost like static, and about 5 sec later the system will hard lock. I do not get this problem with this video card in 2 other systems. I do not get this problem with a geforce 1 or geforce 2 mx in my current system. One of my friends has the same motherboard that I do and states that he had the same problems with his radeon 8500 until he upgraded to a 500 watt power supply. Then again, he has 6 hard drives, 3 cd rom drives, and 3 cold cathodes in his system.


A review of this case/powersupply that I have that I found here (http://overclockersclub.com/reviews/x-pidercasereview4.php) mentioned erratic voltage from the power supply. I invoked my asusprobe app that came with the motherboard, and checked out my own voltage.

In a 10 minute scan of voltages, here were the ranges encounted:

12v+ = 12.224 - 12.352
5v+ = 4.757 - 4.811
3.3v = 3.248 - 3.280
Vcore = 1.648 - 1.68

there seemed to be pretty continuous fluctuation between the ranges of those top two values. Is that bad or problematic, or well within normal parameters? At this point i'm grasping at straws trying to get my damn system fixed. I've had to throw a geforce 1 into my system just so that I can play FFXI with my wife, and that and every other game looks like ASS on it compared to the geforce 4.

[Creole Ned]

This may sound dumb but have you checked to make sure the fan on your GF4 is still working? A friend recently experienced problems very similar to yours and it turned out the fan on his GF4 4200 had died.

[Tyrion Lannister]

This may sound dumb but have you checked to make sure the fan on your GF4 is still working? A friend recently experienced problems very similar to yours and it turned out the fan on his GF4 4200 had died.

Good call.

[Nathan Phoenix]

yes, one of the first things i checked was all of the fans in the system, including cpu and gpu.

[Lunch of Kong]

Change the core voltage from 1.5V to 1.7V. That might prevent the videocard from seizing during 3D games. CPU temperature will increase a few degrees, but nothing drastic.

If this stops the lock-ups, what you have is a faulty motherboard.

[Nathan Phoenix]

is there a voltage anywhere that SHOULD be 1.5?

the default for the athlon is 1.65 and I have it at 1.675 right now... hasn't made any difference.

[Bull]

is there a voltage anywhere that SHOULD be 1.5?

the default for the athlon is 1.65 and I have it at 1.675 right now... hasn't made any difference.

Bump it up a little more and see what happens. It's a pretty standard overclocking trick to beat instability in chips that are clocked up.

It can't hurt... unless it fries the chip, of course. I guess if that happend, the bright side would be that replacing the burnt parts might solve the problem.

[Nathan Phoenix]

I realize the effect of raising the voltage. I just remain unconvinced that the cpu voltage has anything to do with this problem, considering that I have no problems whatsoever when I replace the Geforce 4 with a Geforce 1 or GF2 MX.

[Bull]

I realize the effect of raising the voltage. I just remain unconvinced that the cpu voltage has anything to do with this problem, considering that I have no problems whatsoever when I replace the Geforce 4 with a Geforce 1 or GF2 MX.

Yeah, I hear you.

When I don't have a good answer handy, I often try even the most unlikely scenarios to see if it gives me any more data points to consider. If it were something onerus, like a reformat\reinstall, I might balk. But as long as you don't get crazy jacking it up, a couple of extra volts can't hurt.

[Lunch of Kong]

I realize the effect of raising the voltage. I just remain unconvinced that the cpu voltage has anything to do with this problem, considering that I have no problems whatsoever when I replace the Geforce 4 with a Geforce 1 or GF2 MX.

GF4 consume more power than GF1 or GF2 MX. It's possible for the motherboard to have poor power regulators. The motherboard may be letting the GF4 have too much juice, lowering the voltage across the CPU, creating a CPU brownout, and causing your system to crash.

Raising the core voltage by a few tenths of a volt is the workaround for this.

I hope this explains it better.

[Bull]

Raising the core voltage by a few tenths of a volt is the workaround for this.

Yeah, I think it's sort of a long shot, but it's not like it's an idea completely without merit.

[Nathan Phoenix]

I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes

[Nathan Phoenix]

All tweaking the voltage did was raise my cpu temp by about 10' F; it did nothing to solve the problem. I decided to do something completely different. I yanked the 420 watt power supply out and shoved in an old 300 watt one. I played FFXI for about 5 hours continuous with no problems, which would have been previously unheard of.

Now, the only other thing I haven't done is hook up all my lights & fans to the new power supply. If it still works fine after doing that, I think it will have just been a shitty power supply.

Anyone know if you can RMA a power supply that comes with a case?

[Bull]

All tweaking the voltage did was raise my cpu temp by about 10' F; it did nothing to solve the problem. I decided to do something completely different. I yanked the 420 watt power supply out and shoved in an old 300 watt one. I played FFXI for about 5 hours continuous with no problems, which would have been previously unheard of.

Now, the only other thing I haven't done is hook up all my lights & fans to the new power supply. If it still works fine after doing that, I think it will have just been a shitty power supply.

Anyone know if you can RMA a power supply that comes with a case?

Wow, that was an odd one.

I would think you would have to RMA the entire case, not just the power supply. If you talk to them, maybe they will go for a swap of just the power supply.