PSU sufficient?

Adam18290 · 23 Sep 2008 at 19:10

Just trying to help out a mate - he has this psu (Please remove if you consider it to be a competitor)

And hes trying to run a "Sapphire HD 4850 Toxic Edition 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card"

The thing is, hes having problems with his current gfx card - 7800gtx - and to test to see if it is infact the gfx card thats gone he has been given a 4850 to try and test in his PC.

Thanks for looking.

Phil2008 · 23 Sep 2008 at 20:41

Id say you dont want to try a 4850 in a fauty system, I would rule out all the other things first,, only run a 4850 if your system is in good health.

EsaT · 23 Sep 2008 at 21:57

Wouldn't trust that PSU. (...to be anything else than mediocre junk at best)
But what other parts he has and did he change any drivers or like that before problem appeared?
Also what's exact description of problem?

And would never try anything except cheap/old graphic card in potentially faulty PC.

Adam18290 · 24 Sep 2008 at 10:01

He keeps getting boot up codes such as post code 37, 90 and CF where the PC will just not boot into windows. Sometimes he fiddles around with the DVI cable which brings on the screen and allows it to boot. I couldn't give you much more information apart from hes changed battery, cleared cmos, updated bios all to no avail.

Could be a number of things at this stage but he wanted to see if he could rule out the gfx card first.

He has a Fatality AN8 sli, 7800gtx, that above 500w psu and Im assuming 2gb ram.

Just downloaded the mobo manual which gives a list of post code definitions.

CF - Test CMOS R/W Functionality
9.0. - Complete uGuru initial process
AWARD BIOS take over booting job
37 - Test DMA Channel 1.

Greebo · 24 Sep 2008 at 10:50

Well from the error codes you get this:

37 - Test DMA Channel 1
90 - Complete uGuru initial process
AWARD BIOS take over booting job
CF -Test CMOS R/W functionality

None of these errors would make me think that the graphics card was the problem tbh.

I would have expected to see 25 or 2B for video card related issues.

Looking at the codes, I would suspect a faulty mobo.

pastymuncher · 24 Sep 2008 at 12:02

EsaT said:
Wouldn't trust that PSU. (...to be anything else than mediocre junk at best)
But what other parts he has and did he change any drivers or like that before problem appeared?
Also what's exact description of problem?

And would never try anything except cheap/old graphic card in potentially faulty PC.

It's actually not a bad psu. I have one from a build 4 years ago and it is still going strong. I use it for bench testing. It is very heavy and seems to be well built. It has three problems though. 1. The two 80mm fans are noisy when it get's heavily loaded. 2. It only has 18A on the 12v rail. 3. It has no pci-e cable and only a 20 pin main cable. Aside from that it has never given me a problem.

I really would'nt lend him your 4850 to test in a potentially faulty board though. Remove the link as well as they are a competitor.