PSU shutdown - motherboard or video cards?

genma saotome

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Jul 6, 2008
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I'm trying to figure out if my ASUS a8n SLI deluxe MB is causing a Power Supply shut down. Any advice is most welcome. This is what's going on:

I have a a8n-sli deluxe motherboard and run two evga 7900gtx video cards in sli mode. Recently I had to rma the video cards and a day or two after receipt of the replacements I started to get PSU shutdowns: 2, 3, 5 minutes of up time and then bang, power is off. Thinking it was a problem in the PSU, I pulled out the Seasonic 525W PSU and replaced it with an Enermax 625W. It made no difference. I also shuffled the video cards around, using all 7 possible combinations of cards and positions. The only installation that works is no video cards at all.

When a video card is installed and I boot the system, I get a nvidia system mgr message saying the video card is not getting enough power. The video card has it's own 6 pin power plug in place. Now, a couple minutes later the PSU shuts down but get this: on day 1 of using the replacement cards -- only one installed -- the system ran ok. I also plugged in the suplimental 12V plug into the MB and that made no difference.

Any ideas what's going on here?
 

genma saotome

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Jul 6, 2008
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18,510
Ahhh... it's not a blown cap but a damaged lead on a cap. It's very close to where the edge of one of the video cards would be... I bet I damaged it when removing that card.

Thanks for the tip.