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XFX R9 280X Turbo requires 8-pin and 6-pin, options with Corsair GS700?

Tags:
  • XFX
  • Power Consumption
  • PCI Express
  • Corsair
  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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March 2, 2014 4:06:37 AM

Greetings, I am pursuing technical support with XFX but wanted to ask here to see what good advice might be offered. I just purchased a XFX R9 280X Turbo Black, a real beast of a card.

My question is: should the two 6-pin-plus-2-pin cables from the GS700 PSU, which are advertised as being 6-pin and 8-pin compatible, work when connected to the two PCI-e sockets on the 280X, which are 8-pin and 6-pin respectively?

Backstory of my configuration and experience:

The rest of my system is a Gigabyte z77p-d3 motherboard, V8 CoolerMaster CPU cooler, i7 cpu and 4x8 sticks of ddr3 dual channel RAM, 1 HDD and 1 SSD, powered by a GS700 Corsair PSU. I'm upgrading my old GTX 560Ti which ran fine in this machine for 3 years. I'm guessing the graphics card is by far the big power draw but my 700W PSU should supply the new card adequately.

My experience with the new 280X card has been that everything powers up except the motherboard. I can see fans on the PSU, CPU cooler, case and graphics card all spin up, and hear the HDD start up. So I doubt the PSU has been overloaded, I would expect it to refuse to start up at all if too many watts were being drawn. Everything powered from the motherboard, which to be honest is just my Thermaltake keyboard with a prominent red light on it, fails to power up. No BIOS screen, monitor (HDMI connection that works when I transfer it to my laptop) does not power on, no POST beeps, nothing.

If I transfer the keyboard USB to my laptop, it works fine. If I plug my old graphics card in to this system, it works fine. I cannot tell if my motherboard, PSU or graphics card is causing this failure to start.

One thing driving me crazy is the 'quick start' guide and associated cables that came with the graphic card. The guide clearly states 4 possible options, 2 bad, 2 good.

1/ Good power connection - 2 6-pin cables from PSU connecting to 2 6-pin ports on the card. (remember, the card has two ports, one 8-pin and one 6-pin. These diagrams do not match the physical reality of my card) Text: "connect TWO individual PCI Express (6-Pin) power cables to each individual connector on the graphics card."
2/ Good power conncetion - 2 8-pin cables from PSU connecting to 2 8-pin ports on the card. Text: "Connect two individual PCI Expres (8-Pin) power cables directly from the power supply to each individual connector on the graphics card. NOTE: Do not plug a 6-Pin power cable into an 8-pin power connector.)"
3/ Bad power connection - 1 6-pin cable using a splitter to split to 2 6-pin plugs and being plugged into the 2 6-pin ports on the card. Text: "Do not use a PCI-Express (6-pin) Y-splitter to split a single power source into two. If the graphics card has two PCI-Express power ports, each will need its own independent connection to the power supply."
4/ Bad power connection - 2 6-pin cables from the PSU using a splitter to merge them into one 8-pin plug and connecting to one of 2 8-pin ports on the card. Text: "XFX does not support the user of two 6-Pin to one 8-Pin power cable converter for these graphics cards. they are only designed to work with high performance power supplies using 8-Pin PCI Express power cable."

These diagrams make little sense to me. I have done the best I can, and connected one 6-pin-plus-2-pin cable to the 8-pin port, and one 6-pin cable to the 6-pin port. I then get the failure to power on described above.

Cables with the card are:
1/ 2 6-pin sockets merging to 1 8-pin plug. This would let me use my 2 pci-e 6-pin-plus-2-pin cables, merge them to fit the 8-pin port on the card, but then I'd have no more pci-e cables left from my PSU to fit the remaining 6-pin port on the card. But most importantly, I would argue, it is exactly what they say NOT to do in their 4th power example.
2/ 2-molex to 6-pin plug. I could use this to give me a 6-pin plug, but as my PSU already has 2 good 6-pin-plus-2-pin cables, I don't seem to need this.

I'm mystified why the cabling advice doesn't match my card, and the only obvious way of using my cables to plug into the card are resulting in failure to boot. Can anyone explain why they give the quick start advice they do?

Sorry that was so wordy. I've read that the 290X, one step up from my 280X, is recommended a 850W power supply. Could my 700W supply simply not be enough for one 280X card?

Nick

More about : xfx 280x turbo requires pin pin options corsair gs700

Best solution

March 2, 2014 6:11:42 AM

700 watts should be more then enough for the card.

As for the power cables, 6+2 should have no problems being a 6 or and 8 pin cable without issues. So 8 + 6 is correct.

It may be recommended to test on a friends system if you can.

The 6 pin to 8 pin adapters are not the kind that are built into a power supply, they are a 3rd party cable some users get. Absolutely no reason why it honestly would not work, but XFX just does not want to have to support it.
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March 2, 2014 6:48:11 PM

Thank you nukemaster, very helpful. So the PSU should have sufficient power and my cabling is correct. I would certainly test on a friend's system, the machine I have available does not have enough PCI-e cables but I will try another ASAP. A very busy weekend knocked out my ability to spend much time testing.

I am still waiting for a response from XFX support. It may be time for an RMA.
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March 3, 2014 12:02:20 PM

Lets hope it does not need an RMA, but these things do happen sometimes.
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March 15, 2014 3:07:50 AM

Thanks for the help nukemaster. XFX support replied saying I must upgrade my 700W PSU to 750W, which I did and still does not help. I really feel they were ducking the issue anyway. When I reported that it still didn't work and requested RMA, they said I should contact my local reseller.

I've now tried swapping bits out of a friend's PC and find the card works fine there, but continues to fail in my system. So it seems an RMA is not required, but I don't know what's making it fail in my system. I've started a new thread at http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2065128/xfx-280x... as I'm at a loss and don't want to start blindly swapping hardware at great expense in cost and time.

Nick
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March 15, 2014 2:44:09 PM

Well, it seems like you got your problem solved after all in the end.

Shame you had to get a new power supply for nothing. I think someone at XFX needs to be talked to about better trouble shooting since the card in NO way needs that much power(it is rated at about 250 watts and 1 6 pin + 1 8 pin + the slot is good for about 300 watts of power).
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September 24, 2014 3:36:01 PM

My brothers z77 gigabyte board had a bios incompatibility with his xfx 280x. The only solution that worked was unfortunitly was hooking it up to the bottom 4x slot. The alternative was to update to a buggy beta driver and omg was it buggy. Everytime I hooked the gpu to the top slot, Id boot up and nothing would happen on screen. everything would boot, I just wouldn't get a picture.
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