Symptoms of Insufficient Power

barathum

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Jan 16, 2007
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Hi all, I'm new to this forum, and would like to get some assistance.

I just bought a GeCube X1950 Pro 256Mb, the rest of my system is:
Athlon XP 3000+ @2167 (default)
GA7N400Pro2 Rev 2
2x 256Mb DDR 333 Kingston HyperX
Maxtor 80Gb PATA + 200 Gb SATA
Pioneer DVD-RW
SB Live! Platinum w Live Drive
Enlight 400w

Now i've read on the forum n manual that x1950 needa 30A on the +12v rail, i found out that my Enlight 400w has only 15A on that rail, however I've been running my PC without a problem for almost 2 weeks now. What should I expect? Is my card or system going to do die in the near future? what's the symptoms of insufficient power? Thanks for any help and sorry if this has been asked million times before...
 

donnagual

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Dec 7, 2005
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The signs can be any number of things, that is the tricky part about troubleshooting psus. They tend to make it look like OTHER parts are dying, when all that is happening is that those other parts are simply not getting enough power.

By the way, you have DUAL +12v rails, and your power supply has a total of 29amps on the +12v rail.
 

barathum

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Jan 16, 2007
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hmm i never know that i had dual 12v rails, how could i miss that info when i look at the sticker, but there's only one 400w model from enlight's website, so that must be it.

Does underpowered VGA may result in low-performance as opposed to artifacts?

I can't get fortron PSU in my country; Acbel, Enlight and Thermaltake PurePower is the most common PSU sold by local vendors...
 

Blouge

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Jan 7, 2007
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If having two rails is bad, what about having four rails? Mine has two 18 A's and two 30 A's. It's in Tier 2:

Toughpower 850W Cable Management
http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Power/ToughPower/W0131/w0131.asp

These rails are mysterious to me. There aren't four of anything that I can see. What are they?

I have like 5 fans an IDE and a floppy. Is it OK to jam everything on one cable? The fans only draw like 0.2 A; they are 120mm 1200 rpm. I spread them out over two cables, thinking it's safer, but then the PSU has a minimum amperage supported for various rails...
 

Blouge

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>Where are you people getting this idea that multiple rails is a bad thing.

Ah, so its the total max current (Amps) that matters, although it can't be simply computed by just adding the rail's individual max current.

>Why would you want to when you have more then enough molex connectors.

I meant putting one fan on each of five molex connectors, where those molex connectors are all one modular cable (I was errneously calling this a "line"). I was wondering if distributing the fans / disks over two seperate modular cables is better.