Hrm.. power issues?

Narj

Narj

Narj

Soldato
Joined
19 Feb 2010
Posts
13,254
Location
London
Hi chaps,

I've noticed that when I have a load of stuff plugged into my USB ports, my graphics card can fail to output at the windows login screen and I'll have to unplug say a USB HDD and reboot to get the display back.

2 x USB HDD
2 x XBox controllers
Logitech G15
Cyborg RAT

This has started happening since I installed my Sound Card (Asus Xonar Essence STX). Seeing as a relay clicks before the windows login screen, I'm thinking perhaps there's a power surge from the STX that causes a dip in PSU output or something... Strange how having so much USB stuff plugged in seems to be the cause, though?

Has anyone got any ideas for a workaround? I can live with it but it's a bit perplexing. The PSU is an XFX850 80 plus silver one.
 
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I would get a multimeter and test the output first.

You can also use CPUID to check the power on the 8pin EPS, 24pin & I think the PCI-E too!
 
Not blackening the brand, but wattage isn't an indication of quality. Computers require clean smooth voltages which, ideally, does not vary on any rails. It sounds like you may need a mains-powered USB hub to avoid sapping power from the PC.

PSU will trip for a set amount of time if there is a short in the system, it would be massively unlikely to just cut the 6/8pin PCI-E power connections - it is all or nothing if there is a problem.

So my thoughts: try a mains-powered USB hub for your external devices, and see if the issue persists. If it does, it could be anything from sound/gfx drivers to hardware issues with motherboard, soundcard, graphics and, of course, PSU.
 
Cheers, I'll get hold of a powered hub... I think the keyboard is quite power hungry for a USB device if I remember rightly.

Actually, good point with the drivers... I'll try the 3rd party unified Asus drivers and see if they make any difference. Might be worthwhile having a look for updated mobo firmware too... last time I updated it was last December.

Cheers!
 
Just thought I'd update here.

I uninstalled and cleaned the standard Asus drivers, then followed the procedure to install the modified Asus Xonar Unified Drivers.

It was a bit of fiddling about but since I did that, I'm not getting any problems. Also, the random sound loop crashing I was getting in some games seems to have completely gone away (yes, I made sure GX was disabled before).

So in short, it looks like Asus are a bunch of jokers when it comes to writing drivers.

Cheers!
 
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