Overtaxed Powersupply?

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 7:22 pm

Ive been recently trying to upgrade my router box with a usb2 card, unsucessfully. I also recently added a second hard drive to the box. I'm wondering if I'm reaching the power supplys limit in terms of wattage somehow. The power supply is rated at 300W peak only. Hardware configuration currenly looks like this:

Mobo (soyo brand), P3-700@933, 3 sticks of PC-133 (about 420-ish megs), a 30 gig hard drive thats about 4 and a half years old, a 40 gig hard drive thats less than a month old, an old matrox 2d pci video card, A dlink 10/100 nic, a realtek-based 10/100 nic, 48speed CD-ROM, 2 80mm case fans, and 2 60mm variable speed auto-sensing fans on the heatsink.

If I try to add the USB2 card, the PC freezes eventually. Sometimes at mid boot, sometimes a minute after log on, sometimes hours later. If I try to swap out the pci vid for an old Voodoo3, with or without the usb2 card in, the pc will freeze halfway through boot, or will not even make it to the boot phase, instead leaving me with garbage spread out across the list of bios recognized devices, if it even gets to display that list.

Presently I have several add on cards sitting near this box that I would like to put in this box, namely the usb2 card, an old sound card, and the voodoo 3, but this proves problematic at best. Am I overtaxing this boxes powersupply, and if so, what kind of wattage should I look for when finding its replacement?

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:11 pm

Yeah, the PSU could be going bad, something else to check for is dust. Overheating CPUs are much more sensetive to lack of power, if you haven't removed the CPU HSF ever and you know it is using thermal grease and NOT a thermal pad, pop the HSF off and put a small amount of arctic silver on the chip. Get all the dust out of the rest of the system while you are at it.

Get at least a quality 350 watt PSU, a cheap 550 watt will probably put out the same amount of power tho.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:57 pm

The CPU never overheats in this thing. This freezing thing just started yesterday when I tried to install the USB card and swap out the vid card. I'll take apart the PSU and check for dust sometime. A friend of mine laso has a brand new 300W PSU I could try too.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:31 pm

Well its 300W peak. Youre sure I'm not hitting its sustained limit either?

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:39 pm

No Way. I'd be surprised if you pulled 180 watts at max-load. Do be aware though that the PSU if the most common failure in any given box.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:16 pm

Mobius wrote:No Way. I'd be surprised if you pulled 180 watts at max-load. Do be aware though that the PSU if the most common failure in any given box.

I've seen way more hard drives die then PSUs.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:40 pm

Well then what else could it be?

akula65 · Post by **akula65** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:45 pm

I don't know which Soyo motherboard you have, but I have (almost) twin systems with the following configuration:

Soyo SY-7VCAE motherboard
Pentium III 933 MHz CPU

Slots are filled as follows (in order):
AGP - 3dfx Voodoo5 5500
PCI - Empty
PCI - ATI TV Wonder (Gamebox1) or Adaptec DuoConnect (Gamebox2)
PCI - D-Link DFE-530TX+ 10/100 Mbps Network Adapter
PCI - Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live!
PCI/ISA Combo - Empty

This motherboard was extremely finicky about card placement. Sound Blaster Live! had to have at least three slots between it and the Voodoo5 or things didn't work (lockups or wouldn't boot). I can't seem to put anything whatsoever in the PCI slot adjacent to the AGP slot, otherwise I also get lockups or boot failures.

The order and placement of your cards may be what is causing you grief, and it may be that you can get things to work by re-ordering the cards and/or maintaining a free slot between the graphics card and the other cards.

Good Luck!

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 6:12 am

My legacy 98SE box

AMD 600 K7 Athlon
256MB RAM
300W PSU
WD 20 GIG
WD 30 GIG
SONY 16x DVD
PLEXTOR CDRW
FLOPPY
3 Case Fans
FIC SD-11 Mobo

AGP Voodoo 3500 TV
-----------
PCI Pinacle Firewire Card
PCI Netgear FA311
PCI Sound Blaster Live (platinum)
ISA USR 56K (which is going by by no more faxing needed)

PSU is not taxed one BIT, but I too had issues with IRQ assignments

most older motherboards O/S like to assign IRQ from the bottom up especially if you have ACPI disabled, so if i placed my soundcard where my firewire or nic were it would share the irq with the video card and crash(live cards want 2 irq's)

PCI slot below the AGP is shared with the AGP slot. that's why it is left open on my mobo.

SC always goes into lowest PCI slot and with out any fuss it gets IRQ 5. most pairs of PCI slots are shared even with intergrated system features (USB/RAID Controllers)

You said you have 2 nics..

Avder wrote:, A dlink 10/100 nic, a realtek-based 10/100 nic,....

why?

remove the sloted one go with the mobo one..

just keep the slot below the AGP empty

CHOICES CHOICES

One other thing to check, did you recently add more ram to the system???

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:50 pm

BUBBALOU wrote:You said you have 2 nics..
Avder wrote:, A dlink 10/100 nic, a realtek-based 10/100 nic,....
why?

If youd have read my original post, youd have seen....

Avder wrote:Ive been recently trying to upgrade my router box...

There is no built in nic.

BUBBALOU wrote:One other thing to check, did you recently add more ram to the system???

No, I did not. Please, try to think a bit before posting

To others: I havnt yet had time to try your suggestions yet as I have been extremely busy. And even if I do have time I dont dare try anything until my college fixes its network. If I disconnect from it theres a tendencey of never letting you get back on it ever again. I'll post again after Ive had time to try your ideas.

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:55 pm

Edit works for you I see

They are just suggestions, if you're not open to them go back to PD!

but definately check the PCI slot placements and IRQ assignments, even AceCombat knows better!

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 10:55 pm

BUBBALOU wrote:Edit works for you I see

They are just suggestions, if you're not open to them go back to PD!

I never used edit. I quoted directly from the poast I made several days ago. Others can verify that.

Secondly, I cannot go back to someplace if I was never there to begin with.

Thirdly, when I can afford to mess around with this boxes hardware config it is likely that I will be doing everything imagineable in an attempt to get things working.