Re: Boot process not starting

"Paul" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:h67n79$eqn$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lee Antony wrote:


Thank you for your interest Jan, but you have started me on interesting journey. Checking the power requirements for my video card seemed a good idea but things have got complicated (as they do).

I thought I had ordered a Radeon 4850 card. My invoice from the supplier says it is an Asus Radeon 4850 HD 512MB PCI- PCI-E DVI. The beautiful box it came in says it is an Asus EAH4850 HDMI. The card itself (card is perhaps the wrong word for a black brick that is 270 x 110 x 35 mm and weighs 763 gm) proudly announces that it is an Asus ENGTX285.

Now please hit my head if I'm wrong but everything I look up about ENGTX285 says it is a Nvidia based card.

So it seems that Nvidia = Radeon = Amd = ATI = Asus. Perhaps everything in the pc world is owned by one person and all those brand names: Intel, Apple, Microsoft, HP, Epson, Gigabyte, Canon, Sun, AMD etc. are just a smokescreen hiding this shadowy figure.

Back to the power requirements... as I can't be sure of the true nature of this card I had to look up the numbers for a range of adapters of this type. It seems they need at minimum a 450W PSU. That is much more than I was expecting.

The PSU on this desktop is, I believe, quite decent quality but its maximum rating is 500W. Do you think I should buy a 750W ATX PSU and pray that it will fix my problem?

Thanks for taking the time to help.
Regards Lee Antony.



The ENGTX285 is a $375.00 video card, versus $100 - $150 for an HD 4850.
So if that was some kind of accident at shipping, it wasn't very clever
on their part.

A GTX 285 is 60W at 2D idle, like when the BIOS starts. Most of that
power comes from +12V, so a rough guess is 12V @ 5A for the video card.
It ramps up to much higher power levels, when 3D gaming.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/evga-geforce-gtx285ssc_5.html#sect0

The fastest way to present the specs on your PSU, is to find a picture
of the label on the side of the supply. For example, a modern ATX 2.2
supply has 12V1 and 12V2 rails, with the processor running from 12V2,
and the other loads running from 12V1. So at the least, you could state
the max current flow levels on those. Finding a picture would save
some typing, and if you cannot find a picture, then the make and model
is likely enough info to go on.

Example of a power supply label. All the numbers are important.

http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/17-152-028-21.jpg

The main power consumers on the computer are the processor and
the video card(s). But if you stuff enough hard drives in a computer
case, they can also be important to include in any power calculation.
Your processor is not a power hog, and the video card isn't either,
at least at BIOS startup.

I wouldn't expect startup power to be that much of a problem
for a 500W supply. It is when the Windows desktop starts to appear,
and the video driver loads for the first time, might be when the first
power blip occurs. But getting into the BIOS shouldn't be quite
so bad, as the resolution is 640x480 and the thing is running in
some kind of VESA mode.

Paul

Here is the message I tried to send earlier. I did find it in Sent items folder dated 2 Jan 2003.

The PSU is a Colors-IT 500W Gold Silent ATX 12V v2.2 compliant switching
power supply. The published output characteristics are:

+3.3V 28A
+5V 30A
+12V1 14A
+12V2 13A
-12V 0.3A
+5VSB 2.5A

I have no expertise here but those numbers seem to be quite a good spec for
driving one PCI-e, one SATAII and one IDE device.

I looked up some pictures and checked the driver cd and what I've got here
is a ENGTX285 but I definitely only paid for a HD4850.

This makes me either lucky or unlucky. If I got a working $375 item for
less than half price them I'm lucky. If I got a totally wrecked RMA item
that some doofus in a warehouse put in the wrong box then I'm astonishingly
unlucky.

I am tending towards the second conclusion because I tried your beep test on
the board without RAM and video. A second after power-on three long beeps
began and I let it run for a couple of minutes to be sure that the 14 second
nonsense was over.

My guess is that the PSU is good and the video card is as bad as a video
card can get. I need to find a neighbour that I can bribe into lending me a
PCI-e card.
If that works I'll risk losing the bargain of the year by sending back the
ENGTX285. Maybe they will replace like with like - no, no I'm not that
lucky this week.

Thanks for taking the time to help.
Regards Lee Antony.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: P4P800se - what is it with this board?
    ... It seems to be a PSU problem, I have changed my 300W PSU with a 550W ... issues with Antec Truepower supplies, and the problem was corrected in subsequent production by changing some component ... A port 80 POST card used to cost $100, ... In terms of buying a good power supply for your computer, ...
    (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus)
  • Re: Boot process not starting
    ... If I had paid that much money for a video card I'd be more than a little annoyed not to get any instructions on how to hook up the power. ... really depends on the power supply design. ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: +12v Rising under load, +5v dropping.
    ... You're absolutely certain the smell origionates from within the PSU ... itself and not from MoBo components? ... This card has it's own ... > power connection, direct from the PSU, ...
    (uk.comp.homebuilt)
  • Re: Power supply fried?
    ... Reseated vga card just in case but then that wouldnt cause a loss of power ... Would a faulty PSU cause this? ... The simple cure was to rejumper the USB / PS/2 sockets power source from ...
    (uk.comp.homebuilt)
  • Re: PCI-e 16x Power Supply and Geforce 8800 GTX Dual DVI
    ... I've checked out the card and I can't see anything wrong with it. ... The PSU in my HP isn't up to it at all, ... Molex connectors for two 6Pin converters anyway. ... which comes with 6 Pin Power Connectors for Two PCI Express Graphic ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)