Mobo voltage issues? (Asrock 939Dual-VSTA)

[whitmell]

I just got one of these mobos and tried to turn it on - I got a quick spin of the fan (just a split second), and that was it. I was using a Fortron 550W power supply, that has been reliable for the last 2 years running an ABIT KT7A-RAID w/ 4 hard drives, 2 DVD drives, and a full PCI bus. I had to get an adapter for the 4-pin 12V connector on my motherboard, and that came right out of one of my regular molexes. So just to test, I got a 500W power supply from CompUSA, and it works just fine.

I measured the 12V rails on my 2 PSUs, the Fortron was 12.21, and the CompUSA was 12.39. Could this be why? Is it possible my BIOS is configured to use a higher voltage, and if I turn it down a bit, I could use the other PSU? I'd really rather use the Fortron, as I trust it more than the CompUSA.

 

[whitmell]

ah! Makes perfect sense, thanks. I thought this other PSU was pretty good (it has purple molexes - it has to be good, right?), but I guess not. So here's another question. Would a 550W Coolmax be as good as this 500W CompUSA? I've been seeing negative things about Coolmax psu's.

 

[niz]

I've been through this whole thing too with a a 775-Dual-VSTA
Its your bios settings for your ram. It comes defaulted to low voltage which is not enough for some ram. Most ram works but some brands/types don't.

The only way around it is to borrow some other ram that will work to at least boot into bios setup, where you can change the voltage setting to normal and timings to flexible. Then power off, reinstall your own ram and try again.

 

[whitmell]

well, like I said, it worked with a different PSU