8800GTS loss of video signal

[Mojoejojo]

New system build.

- ASUS P5B LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
- PNY VCG88GTS32XPB GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6600 - Retail
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
- G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail
- Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450Watt SmartPower 2.0 Power Supply - Retail
- ADVUEU ADV190WDT Black-Silver 19" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail

System build went without a hitch, and ran great for 4 days. Had just completed a defrag and scandisk. Came back to system, and no video signal to monitor. System will reboot, but looses video signal as windows loads. I have tried reloading video drivers, reloading chipset drivers, beta video drivers, and reloading windows. Has anyone else had similar problems?
Thanks

 

[Anoobis]

That Antec Smartpower 2.0 is suspicious. Do you or any friends have a PSU you can test the system with? Try a PC shop if not.

I wouldn't trust the entire SmartPower line at all. Normally I don't trust Newegg's reviews however take a look at the reviews on Newegg for the SmartPower PSUs. There's a consistency of failures, returns and multiple factory RMAs. I too had to RMA a SmartPower 2.0 500W unit. I've replaced it with a Mushkin 550W and haven't had any problems. I'm going to eBay the new SmartPower unit Antec sent back to me. The faulty unit started acting up within 9 months of purchase.

 

[coverfire]

Hmmm, My 8800GTS did the same thing I had it running overnight came back to it and had no vid signal, checked cabling etc. What fixed it was completely removing power from the system (unplug) and then plugged it back in, havn't had a problem since.

One other thing to check is make sure the GPU fan is running, if not may be kaput.

Ahhh, ha.. just looked closer at your p-supply specs. I'm running a 550watt thermaltake and my system barely had the power for the vid card, I had to use the 2 molex to 6pin connector that came with the card instead of my powersupplies 6pin because it wasn't feeding it enough power. Had this problem before the blackout.

 

[Mojoejojo]

Thanks for the feedback. After doing some more research, I'm thinking that the power supply may in fact be the culprit. I just wish I had a second PCIe system to check the card with. I went ahead and ordered:

Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU ATX 12V 2.0 500W Power Supply - Retail

so that I can eliminate or identify the power supply as the culprit. what threw me, was that it worked fine for 4 days, then worked in safe mode. Is it common for the 12v rail to "partially" fail this way, or it's amp capacity to drop? This has certainly been a learning experience.
Thanks