PSU Advice needed

Mart2912

Mart2912

Mart2912

Associate
Joined
25 Sep 2007
Posts
773
Location
Scotland
Hey guys, well recently I sent back my 7900GT as it was starting to die and in return I got a nice 8800GTS. However I have a feeling my power supply is just not up to scratch. It’s a Tagan 420W:http://www.pcmoddingmy.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.235
Now the reason why I know its not up to scratch is because when I play games such as Live for speed the card runs fine yet when I run the CSS stress test a coloured screen appears(it has show both a light blue and a grey screen) and nothing responds.

At the moment (now try not to laugh too much :p) I am running an AMD 3500+, 2GB ram, 1x HDD 1x OD and a XFX extreme music sound card.
What PSU would you guys recommend? especially something which will run with these components which i will soon be buying:http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-068-OK&groupid=701&catid=339&subcat=1026

I would prefer it to be as cheap as possible while still being a decent enough PSU.(note that i dont overclock)

Cheers.
 
Thanks for the reply, at first I was a bit hesitent with that power supply but from reading a few reviews it seems to hold it's ground, i may consider buying it.
 
Ezyryder said:
The Tagan should be giving plenty of power to that system so I doubt is your PSU.
Click to expand...

Tagen are a good make, however if you read my original post you'll see that the PSU is of an old design and therefore can only supply 63% of it's power at 12V

Compared to modern PSU's it should really be considered a 300W unit.

Also the 7900GT doesn't take a lot of power. I have a couple of them and they have a molex for additional power, none of your PCI-E high power connections here. The models that had PCI-E power didn't need it.

The 8800GTS takes a fair bit, I'd say double the power of a 7900GT hence why the PSU is under more strain with the new card.

nearly all power used by a PC these days is @ 12V

Previously 12V was used mainly for fans and motor spindles in drives which is why older PSU have a lower relative +12V output. They were designed for a different task.

AD
 
Hey guys, heres an update on the situation:

I went for the corsair PSU and installed it but I get the same problem :confused:

Now after the loading bar disappears on the CSS stress test it runs fine until you get to the water part and then the screen turns into a colour (so far black, grey, blue and purple...) and the computer wont respond. Even when I press the restart button on the computer that same colour remains so I have to completely turn the computer off.

What I also noticed is that when I play a game such as oblivion on medium settings the game runs fine but when I turn the settings up I have the same scenario as described above. I tried using my old 6600GT just to test it and it worked fine so I have no idea whats wrong.
 
Hi,

Did you unistall the driver and the boot in safe mode to remove any residual shards of driver code before installing the 8800?

Do you have good case cooling, ideally looking for a least a couple of 80mm fans + the PSU fans. Have you tried with the side off the case?

Does it only fail in the stress test? have you reinstalled CSS ? could be a corrupted install.

You could have a faulty card... can you try it in a different system?

AD
 
Hey, well what I done was uninstalled the driver (while I had the 8800 in) and used a driver sweeper programme to delete any remaining files and reinstalled the latest nvidia driver. The case that I use is a Thermal take Tsunami, which has a front 120mm fan, a rear 120mm fan and a side 80mm fan. Unfortunately I can’t test the card in another system and I get the same problem on any game which puts the card under any load. (Like css/oblivion)
 
Mart2912 said:
Hey guys, heres an update on the situation:

I went for the corsair PSU and installed it but I get the same problem :confused:

Now after the loading bar disappears on the CSS stress test it runs fine until you get to the water part and then the screen turns into a colour (so far black, grey, blue and purple...) and the computer wont respond. Even when I press the restart button on the computer that same colour remains so I have to completely turn the computer off.

What I also noticed is that when I play a game such as oblivion on medium settings the game runs fine but when I turn the settings up I have the same scenario as described above. I tried using my old 6600GT just to test it and it worked fine so I have no idea whats wrong.
Click to expand...


As I said, it wasn't the PSU. It seems your new card is borked too. Try it on a friends computer. It's the best way of knowing for sure.
 
Hey guys, well a quick update. The card was indeed faulty as I tried it in my mates computer (he runs an 8800gtx, e6600). Thanks for the help guys, eventually got to the bottom of it. :P
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom