4870X2 or PSU knackered?

Durzel · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:01

Been using a Sapphire 4870X2 for a few weeks now without issue in my system which is powered off a FSP Epsilon 700W PSU. Since this PSU doesn't have a 8-pin PCI-E adaptor I've been using a 6-pin PCI-E to 8-pin PCI-E converter that I sourced.

Everything was running fine until I just tried to boot my PC now, and it gets stuck as soon as it boots on a screen telling me:

"YOU HAVE NOT CONNECTED ONE OF YOUR VIDEO CARD POWER CONNECTORS TO THE POWER SUPPLY. PLEASE REFER TO THE 'GETTING STARTED GUIDE' FOR PROPER HARDWARE INSTALLATION'

..with my PC making a constant beep-beep-beep sound. I have tried to reboot it several times, disconnecting the power completely, etc - nothing worked.

I haven't changed anything or added any hardware between it running one minute and not running the next so there is no additional power drain. For reference the PSU is powering a single 4870X2, C2D overclocked to 4-4.3Ghz, 4GB of RAM, 2 WD Raptors, 1 WD 1TB drive, DVDRW and 3 fans.

I finally managed to get it to boot just now by disconnecting the two 80mm fans at the front of my case, but I'm concerned that the PSU is on its way out?

Anyone have any thoughts or experiences?

ACESHIGH · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:19

I would have suggested removing some of the case fans, dvdrw & extra hdds to see if this gets the PC going (less draw on the psu) but you seem to have got it working. I wouldnt have thought that 2x 80mm fans would draw much power but maybe they were pushing the psu over the edge (though the FSP Epsilon 600W & 700W are both certified to run the 4870x2). Were the 6-pin PCI-E to 8-pin PCI-E converters definitely connected correctly?

Durzel · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:25

Well, disconnecting the front 2 fans enabled me to boot the PC - but I'm concerned that a) nothing has changed in my system between it working one minute and not the next (i.e. the fans I have now disconnected were connected before) and b) if the PSU is potentially on the limit/on its way out I dont want to end up in a situation where it blows taking out half my PC with it.

Does 700W sound like it should be enough for my spec?

EsaT · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:42

700W is well enough even if you have lot of overvolting on CPU and during boot load is at low level but FSP Epsilon isn't high quality PSU so harder to say without testing what is causing that.
(if anyone asks me these dual GPU CF/SLI "single cards" are questionable jerry rigs to start with)

gt_junkie · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:46

EsaT said:
but FSP Epsilon isn't high quality PSU

I thought the FSP Epsilon was a good quality PSU? :confused:

It could have course be on its way out. But i'd double check the GPU power connectors (pins and sockets) to see that they're making decent contact.

gt

Greebo · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:50

You have to remember a few key things about psu's

1. 700W is total across the board including 3.3v and 5v lines. The label on the side will show you how that is split up between the lines. For example you might be drawing 50w on the 3.3v, 50w on the 5v and 500w on the 12v which all totals less than 700W but the 500w may be too much for the 12v lines.

2. 700W or whatever manfacturers claim for their psus is quite often peak demand not continous demand which may be less (although in very good psus it is quite often more.

3. The capacitors in psus lose approx 10% of their power per annum so depending on the age, your 700W psu if 3 years old may now only be 500W psu.

4. Not all 12v rails are rated the same power. I have seen psus where rails 3 and 4 are rated for 20a and are meant for the the graphics card and rails 1 and 2 are rated much less for the motherboard.

5. And lastly psus, unless real high end, do not handle mis matched loads very well eg they like a good even spread across all voltage rails and not high on one and low on another.

Lastly, is it a double 6 pin to 8 pin adaptor you are using? 8 pins draw double the amount of power that a 6 pin lead uses so you should really be using two 6 pins to every 8 pin connector.

Some people say that it doesn't matter as the 6 pin wiring is rated high enough to handle that draw of power but that does mean it is all been drawn on one 12v rail which may be rated quite low and not enough for what the 4870x2 is drawing.

So since removing some power drawing items from your system has given the graphics card enough power again, i'm tempted to say it's time to get a new psu i'm afraid.

Dependant on the age of your current psu, you don;t need to go daft and get a 1000W psu as your current psu may only be a 500W or less psu with it's age. However, a little bit more for future proofing such as 800W or 850W wouldn't go amiss if you are having to buy a psu anyway. The other bigh advantage is if you pick right, your psu will come with two or even four 8 pin leads dedicated for the graphics card or even two of them.

Durzel · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:51

I disconnected both connectors from the card and reconnected them but it didn't change anything. The only thing that made a material difference was disconnecting the two front fans, in fact when I disconnected both fans it booted, and when I shutdown and plugged them back in again seconds later it didn't.

Durzel · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:56

Greebo said:
You have to remember a few key things about psu's

1. 700W is total across the board including 3.3v and 5v lines. The label on the side will show you how that is split up between the lines. For example you might be drawing 50w on the 3.3v, 50w on the 5v and 500w on the 12v which all totals less than 700W but the 500w may be too much for the 12v lines.

2. 700W or whatever manfacturers claim for their psus is quite often peak demand not continous demand which may be less (although in very good psus it is quite often more.

3. The capacitors in psus lose approx 10% of their power per annum so depending on the age, your 700W psu if 3 years old may now only be 500W psu.

4. Not all 12v rails are rated the same power. I have seen psus where rails 3 and 4 are rated for 20a and are meant for the the graphics card and rails 1 and 2 are rated much less for the motherboard.

5. And lastly psus, unless real high end, do not handle mis matched loads very well eg they like a good even spread across all voltage rails and not high on one and low on another.

Lastly, is it a double 6 pin to 8 pin adaptor you are using? 8 pins draw double the amount of power that a 6 pin lead uses so you should really be using two 6 pins to every 8 pin connector.

Some people say that it doesn't matter as the 6 pin wiring is rated high enough to handle that draw of power but that does mean it is all been drawn on one 12v rail which may be rated quite low and not enough for what the 4870x2 is drawing.

So since removing some power drawing items from your system has given the graphics card enough power again, i'm tempted to say it's time to get a new psu i'm afraid.

Dependant on the age of your current psu, you don;t need to go daft and get a 1000W psu as your current psu may only be a 500W or less psu with it's age. However, a little bit more for future proofing such as 800W or 850W wouldn't go amiss if you are having to buy a psu anyway. The other bigh advantage is if you pick right, your psu will come with two or even four 8 pin leads dedicated for the graphics card or even two of them.

Thanks for that, that's really helpful info.

You're correct - the 6-pin to 8-pin converter I'm using literally converts the 6-pin PCI-E connector into an 8-pin one, I figured all the talk about 8-pin requiring more power was probably not as bad as we're led to believe, especially as far as I can tell the additional 2 pins are grounds anyway (and as far as I know the card would still work with just a 6-pin plugged in, only the ATI Overdrive section would be disabled)

Not sure on the age of the PSU as I bought it 2nd hand, though I suspect it is probably getting on for 2.5 - 3 years old.

It would seem just from the evidence of what I had to do to get it to boot that the PSU is definitely not quite up to the job, is borderline capable, or whatever. I'll spec out a new PSU - thanks everyone for your help

Greebo · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:58

gt_junkie said:
I thought the FSP Epsilon was a good quality PSU?

It could have course be on its way out. But i'd double check the GPU power connectors (pins and sockets) to see that they're making decent contact.

gt

I have to agree with Esat, although FSP is in general a good oem psu manufacturer, the FSP Epsilon has had some dodgy reviews:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/atx-psu7_11.html

Of course, your psu may just be faulty or just suffering from old age.

EDIT: Try here for good in depth reviews plus if you search the news section it links to other websites in depth reviews as well:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews

Reading that sites reviews and xbit, anandtech, harware cunucks taught me everything I know about psus when I was replacing my 4 year Tagan 480W psu which just couldn't handle my new 4870 in my overclocked rig (well technically adding a blu ray writer was the straw which broke the camels back)

Shaddow · 23 Sep 2008 at 14:58

could just be your fans ok the way out... Once the bearings wear out they can start drawing more and more power. Were they connected to mobi of direct to psu? Worth replacing them if in doubt.

Greebo · 23 Sep 2008 at 15:46

Shaddow said:
could just be your fans ok the way out... Once the bearings wear out they can start drawing more and more power. Were they connected to mobi of direct to psu? Worth replacing them if in doubt.

True but even if that was the case, he must be very close to the limit of his psu which is degrading every day so new fans might fix it for now but only for maybe a few weeks

Even the worst, healthly fans only draw less than 10w max. Once dodgy they might at worse draw 20W each. So if an extra 20W is tipping over his psu, it's time to get a new one.

gareth170 · 23 Sep 2008 at 15:50

i love my £69 psu, hehe. it seems to handle anything.

Greebo · 23 Sep 2008 at 15:52

gareth170 said:
i love my £69 psu, hehe. it seems to handle anything.

I love my £69 psu - OCZ elitextream 1000W - you can get some great b stock stuff sometimes.

Only thing missing was the kettle lead.

gareth170 · 23 Sep 2008 at 15:55

Greebo said:
I love my £69 psu - OCZ elitextream 1000W - you can get some great b stock stuff sometimes.

Only thing missing was the kettle lead.

hehe

Greebo · 23 Sep 2008 at 15:56

gareth170 said:
hehe

I did feel mean keeping the kettle lead from my Tagan psu when I sold it and putting an ordinary lead in with it. The tagan lead is all metal braided and pretty

gareth170 · 23 Sep 2008 at 16:06

Greebo said:
I did feel mean keeping the kettle lead from my Tagan psu when I sold it and putting an ordinary lead in with it. The tagan lead is all metal braided and pretty

lol, i would have done the same too

Big.Wayne · 23 Sep 2008 at 16:21

Durzel said:
Anyone have any thoughts or experiences?

Hey Durzel,

how old is that PSU you are using?

My first guess is that after a few weeks of powering that monstrous Dual-GPU the PSU is dying from the strain.

The really easy solution is to connect the PSU to a PSU-Tester/Multi-Meter and give it a test. Personally I don't know how to use a MM so I bought a PSU Tester which has paid for itself many times over just from the sheer ability to diagnose a faulty PSU in minutes!

I purchased the PSU tester a year and a half ago just after I purchased a Radeon 2900XT. At first it worked fine connected to a 9 month old ANTEC TruePower Trio 550 but after two weeks my system began crashing and acting strangley, still booted fine and what-not but it was apparent to me that something was not quite right.

Bought the PSU tester and it diagnosed the PSU as faulty so purchased an ANTEC Quattro 1kW PSU and everything was fine!

EsaT · 23 Sep 2008 at 17:17

Greebo said:
3. The capacitors in psus lose approx 10% of their power per annum

If that and common claims about power requirements of parts were true there wouldn't be any older than few years PSUs running!

5. And lastly psus, unless real high end, do not handle mis matched loads very well eg they like a good even spread across all voltage rails and not high on one and low on another.

Any modern PSU handles high 12V load and if anything they don't tolerate low 12V load if there's considerable load in 3.3 and 5V.
Neither they do have multiple 12V rails, only current limited wire groups.

Greebo said:
Even the worst, healthly fans only draw less than 10w max.

Non noisy fans rarely exceed 2-3W...
But DC motors might draw power in gulps instead of even draw so that could make worn fan as interference source.

Durzel said:
The only thing that made a material difference was disconnecting the two front fans, in fact when I disconnected both fans it booted, and when I shutdown and plugged them back in again seconds later it didn't.

Try to get different fans...
And try something stressing like 3DMark when you boot without fans, that would rise power draw much higher than during boot and would surely cause crash if two fans is too much additional load during boot.

gt_junkie · 23 Sep 2008 at 18:09

Greebo said:
I have to agree with Esat, although FSP is in general a good oem psu manufacturer, the FSP Epsilon has had some dodgy reviews

Surprised by that as it was quite highly regarded on the forum and was bought by a friend after following the reviews posted about it.

In fact OCUK were selling it at around £110 when it was first released.

That review certainly doesn't do it any favours!

Perhaps it is just too much for it to run.

gt

Durzel · 23 Sep 2008 at 18:53

As mentioned previously, PSU is second hand and I would imagine around 2.5 years old.

I haven't tried rebooting since but I did plug the fans back in while the PC was running without ill effects.

Regarding testing 3DMark, etc - I'm not really sure if it's worth it, what I mean is if the PC wouldn't boot with 2 x 80mm fans connected then it is either borderline capacity, starting to fail, or whatever. Disconnecting the fans (and doing nothing else) enabled the PC to boot when it had previously failed to boot 10 or more times when they were connected. It is conceivable of course that the fans are faulty too (despite the fact they are working fine as we speak) but I don't imagine knackered fans would suddenly start to use exponentially more wattage - if the PSU can't handle 10W or more then I have a problem....

For my own peace of mind I'll probably just buy another 850-1000W PSU and be done with rather than risk - especially as that xbitlabs review doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.