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Hi Guys,
I ran into a problem on Sunday and was wondering if you could help. I recently built myself a new computer. Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra Mobo, Pentium 2.0 GHz processor, 512 MB 2700 DDR RAM, 80GB HDD, DVD-ROM, CD-RW and a Gigabyte 128MB Radeon 9000 Pro 2 graphics card. It was running fine until sunday morning when my mains power tripped off. When i put the power back on and turned on the computer again everything seemed to start up except my graphics card, my monitor just went straight into standby mode. I switched it off and turned it back on again and the same thing happened. I was wondering if it might by my power supply (300Watts) isn’t supplying enough power to the computer so it’s ‘skipping’ my graphics card. I got it working now (took it all apart and put it all back together, didn’t change anything) but want to prevent this happening again. Any ideas what could be causign this?

Thanks In Advance
Jambo

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Hey Jambo,
I wouldn’t suspect the power supply in this instance, unless you have a whole lot of hardware hooked up that you didn’t mention. Sounds more like an anomaly created by the power surge when your main power went out or when it came back on. When you said “took it all apart and put it all back together” were you talking about a complete disassembly of the computer hardware or just pulling and reseating the graphics card ??? Either of these “fixes” could have solved the problem, but it would be very hard to troubleshoot this from a single instance given the variable of the power outage. If it happens again without a power outage or surge, I would then suspect a hardware issue and would look first at the new graphics card (I’m assuming that you didn’t change your monitor here).

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Hi Jambo

IMHO it’s a good idea to be using a good quality power bar with surge and spike protection.
Even better…..a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply, not the courier ) with surge/spike protection.
With either one, it’s OK to turn OFF everything at once, eg. at the power supply, but do not turn everything ON at once. Turn on your heavy power hardware first as they will cause a surge when they come on. That is, turn on your monitor first, then scanner, printer, etc with the computer last.

Have a Great day!!!
Ken

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I think Doc’s right, that it probably was another one of (PC) life’s unexplainable problems. Just to give you an example, two days ago we had a power outage that couldn’t have lasted more than 5-10 seconds. But, the two computers I have upstairs rebooted of course. The two are on a KVM switch, using common KB, mouse and monitor. One of the computers refused to recognize that the keyboard was there and the other came up in some kind of LARGE type, like software for the visually impaired. I rebooted each machine several times, unable to fix the two problems. Finally, in frustration, I powered off the KVM switch to reset it and both problems went away. That Win98 machine with the large type and scrolling screen was a puzzler I thought must’ve had something to do with video settings getting screwed up, AND it’s the second time this has happened. Both instances were right after a power glitch and the KVM has been the culprit without me realizing.

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I only reseated the Graphics card when i said took it all apart. But i have 3 USB devices and a Network connection too, could these be sapping the power?

Jambo

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I would suspect that if you have a ‘power-on’ surge problem, you are going to see that again in the future.
In this day and age, most electronics should incorporate a turn-on reset that allows for the power to settle down on starting before they activate themselves. My best guess would be that you suffered a ‘brown-out’ when either the power failed or came back on – the power does not switch cleanly and momentarily your normally regulated 5V and 12V power rails droop with uncertain results.
As has been suggested, often the best cure is to power down for a few minutes and allow all capacitors and other charge reservoirs to totally discharge. (Experience has taught me that some modems in particular need this sort cold boot to reset themselves after throwing a wobbly.)

The ideal solution is prevention: nothing beats a UPS with transient filtering – it will ensure clean switching on and off of your power. You can pick up very reasonable ones for less than GB

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Maybe this should be a hardware subject, but the question of how big should the power supply be is an interesting question. I straight out snagged this from one of the other boards I frequent, kudos to Geffy at http://www.NTFS.org[/url%5D

Video
AGP video card – 30-40W
PCI video card – 30W

Processor
AMD Athlon 900MHz-1.1GHz – 50W
AMD Athlon 1.2MHz-1.4GHz – 55-65W
AMD Duron 1.0MHz-1.3GHz – 50W
AMD Athlon 1.47MHz-1.73GHz – 75W
Intel Pentium III 800MHz-1.26GHz – 40W
Intel Pentium 4 1.4GHz-1.7GHz – 65W
Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz-2.0GHz – 75W
Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz-2.4GHz – 90W
Intel Celeron 1.0GHz-1.1GHz – 35W
Intel Celeron 1.2GHz-1.4GHz – 50W

Motherboard
ATX Motherboard – 35W-45W

RAM
128MB RAM – 10W
256MB RAM – 20W

Optical Media
24X or higher IDE CD-RW Drive – 35W
32X or higher IDE CD-ROM Drive – 25W
10x or higher IDE DVD-ROM Drive – 20W
SCSI CD-RW Drive – 17W
SCSI CD-ROM Drive – 12W

Hard Drives
5,400RPM IDE Hard Drive – 10W
7,200RPM IDE Hard Drive – 13W
7,200RPM SCSI Hard Drive – 24W
10,000RPM SCSI Hard Drive – 30W
15,000RPM SCSI Hard Drive – 45W

Floppy Drives
Floppy Drive – 5W

Expansion Cards
Network Card – 4W
Modem – 5W
Sound Card – 5W
SCSI Controller Card – 20W
Firewire/USB Controller Card – 10W

Fans
Case Fan – 3W
CPU Fan – 3W

You can add em up and see how close to the max you’re coming. I agree that good surge protection is vital (not a question of if, but when you’ll get a good ol spike), but we always wonder how much power we’re using.

kip

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When in doubt, OVERSIZE your power supply and run it behind a properly sized UPS. It’s better to have more reserve than start to run at the upper edge of your supply wattage/UPS.
I have a 600 watt power supply in the box and a 750VA UPS, with power and line protection. Neither are even “breathing hard”.

Bob

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Cheers Guys,

jkipk,
I

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I would hope Kip’s (Geffy’s) list was of maxima. It’s also unlikely that all devices are drawing their full quota simultaneously. So even though you only have 36W to spare, you can probably breathe easy.

According to that list I’m running 320-350W off my 300W supply. So far it hasn’t displayed any aberrant behaviour. That’s even on 43

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I would suspect that the consumption (Watts) figures shown are the rated maximumm – in other words, they would need to be fully active to be drawing that much power. A CD drive rated at 25W is not drawing 25W sitting idle – or at least it shouldn’t be. In much the same way, a 300W PSU is not continuously using or delivering that much power.
On boot-up however, many ‘accessories’ go into into their own start-up sequence; CD units spin regardless of whether or not there is a CD in them, scanners run a self-calibration, etc.
If you want to play ultra-safe, use the total worst case figures, but I don’t think you have to. A little bit of observation and judgement may save the expense of a bigger PSU.

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By using the chart as a guide, which is it’ intended use, you can get a general idea of how much power you are drawing, info that is not readily available otherwise. I see a lot of questions in the forums regarding non-working hardware, and the power supply is suspect in many of them, but I don’t know of a definitive way to say “Yup, not enough power”. Seems like it would be nice to open a “Power Supply Event Viewer”. Until then, at least we can add up the numbers and get some idea. Re Leif’s comments, while certainly true of my computer use, and many others. for someone who pops in a CD while burning a hard drive full of mp3’s onto a dvd and surfing the web on his overclocked computer chock full of fans is going to run a lot closer to the max, and the truth is that this kind of multi task power drain is becoming a lot more common…..

An interesting subject. (ps I just bought a Raidmax 400w power supply for about $35us..not the best but it has 2 intake and an exhaust fan and is pretty quiet. I’m happy. Antec seems to be the psu maker of choice….)

kip

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Re your “PSU Event Viewer”, Intel provides the Intel Active Monitor for their motherboards. It monitors cpu & mobo temp, fan speeds, and several power supply voltages. It creates and logs alerts if any sensor thresholds are breached.

You should be able to find similar, generic monitors. A search in the hardware forum might be a place to start.

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Yeah actually I use MotherBoard Monitor 5 and SiSoft Sandra. I was thinking (dreaming?) of having the hard drive, for example popping up a screen saying “I NEED MORE POWER!!!”

kip

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Leif,
——————————————–
If you want to play ultra-safe, use the total worst case figures, but I don’t think you have to. A little bit of observation and judgement may save the expense of a bigger PSU.
——————————————-
You are right that you may save a few cents by using a power supply that is on the “light” side and will get away with not having everything running at once, but if you were designing a new system you SHOULD use the worst case figures to determine the total possible power consumption with some reserve built in. The additional cost of a larger PSU should not be a big consideration at this point unless you are really trying to cut your costs to the bone.
This can be the case in some “pre-built” systems that are designed to have the lowest cost per unit, when the engineers give it over to manufacturing and marketing then offers a system that runs “OK”, but nothing can be added to it without voltage starvation occurances. Proper PSU design is Electrical Engineering 101. I wish more manufacturers would take that into consideration.

Bob

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Hi all

The terms surge and spike have been used almost interchangeably in some posts. They are not the same.

A surge is a relatively gradual rise in voltage with a subsequent gradual decrease, similar to a “bell curve”. This typically occurs, for example, when the power drain from the starting of a compressor (eg. freezer, refrigerator) ends and the voltage rapidly rises, overshooting and then levelling off. An effect you might be familiar with is the brief dimming of lights when a freezer compressor starts up with a short extra brightness when the compressor motor gets up to speed. Light bulbs will often burn out when this happens if the refrigerator, freezer, and air conditioner coincidentally start at the same time.

A spike is a very fast, very high rise and fall of voltage such as you would expect when lightning hits the pole in front of your house. Or, you’ve been petting your cat then continue rebuilding your computer…..!!!!

Anyway…….my point is…….don’t settle for just surge protection…….you need spike protection as well……not all devices provide both.

Have a Great day!!!
Ken

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