Strange issue with x4870

[Wetmelon]

Hey everyone. It's time for an upgrade! But oh noes! Nothing ever goes to plan.... The issue I'm having is that with my x1950 in, everything works fine! Yay! But when I take it out and plug in the x4870, my SATA 3.0g/b drive disappears from my bootable device list. It then tries to boot from my non-bootable IDE drive, goes down the line until it hits the Yukon PXE (never set up), and fails the boot altogether. #fail. I currently have my x1950 running on a single molex-PCIe adapter, from 1 rail. The x4870, as you know, takes 2 6pins. This means I'm now running the x4870 on 2 molex-PCIe connecters, 1 on each 20A rail. But it doesn't seem to have a problem with power, because when I unplug 1 6-pin, it says "You have not plugged in one of your 6-pins! blah blah".

I've uninstalled the x1950 Pro drivers, as well as ATT, and I'm pretty sure I have a fairly new CMOS. But I don't know how to update it...


Current specs:

GA-965G-DS3 (Rev 2.0, I think...) Mobo
250gb SATA 3.0g/s HDD
250gb IDE HDD
E6600
550W PSU
ATI x1950 Pro GPU


Upgrade:

SAME
SAME
SAME
Diamond x4870 GPU


Any help that you can provide will leave me eternally grateful xD

 

[hunter315]

What power supply? Link to it if possible. My bet would be you dont have enough power for the 4870 and your PSU isnt able feed power down that SATA cable to keep the sata drive going, this is especially likely if it is an older or cheapo brand PSU.

 

[Wetmelon]

Coolmax ATX 550w PS w/ Silent 120mm Fan Black

That's apparently what I have...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=T13-2013 - didn't expect it to still be on TD!

I'm wondering if it's possible that all I did was jostle a cable (pwr? Sata?) cable loose, but I think that's fairly unlikely...

 

[hunter315]

I would bet on over straining that PSU, it is old, it is listed as being about 65% efficient which is horrible
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817159026
Looking at its power distribution it doesnt look like it is ATX 2.x, its lack of a PFC is also a sign that it is old and low quality, i would swap it out before it can damage anything, this OCZ is good and relatively inexpensive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341016

 

[Wetmelon]

Hmm... I wouldn't be surprised if that was the problem.. after all, the 4870 is a little larger than the 1950 haha. I don't exactly feel like spending more money.. but hey. You think the 500 is large enough? The next upgrade after this is an i7 rig, so I won't be upgrading anything in THIS case. The 4870 will be the last thing... is the 500 (at 80% efficient) good enough?

Do you think that if I remove my 250 IDE that I may have enough pwr (albeit strained) to run everything? Or should I just play it safe and upgrade?

 

[hunter315]

Since your next move is up to an i7 i would suggest this one then, it has enough power for an i7 and a high power graphics card, you can just pull it from the case when you get the i7
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341018

Both of the OCZ PSUs i have linked to are 80+ certified which means that at 20%, 50%, and 100% load they never drop below 80% efficiency. I would just play it safe and upgrade since you are obviously very close to the limit of the coolmax and it may die catastrophically.

 

[mindless728]

i recommend corsair, pc power & cooling, antec, seasonic

 

[Wetmelon]

Hmm yea.. There's no point in risking it for a few hours of Assassin's Creed looking amazing, if I can wait a few days

Now to get Vista/Windows 7 for DX10

 

[Wetmelon]

UPDATE! UPDATE!

I unplugged my IDE drive to see if I could get JUST the SATA drive going. This time, it finds it on the MOBO, knows that the drive has two boots of XP on it, and gives me this message:


"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information."

 

[A_Real_Overclocker]

UPDATE! UPDATE!

I unplugged my IDE drive to see if I could get JUST the SATA drive going. This time, it finds it on the MOBO, knows that the drive has two boots of XP on it, and gives me this message:


"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information."

I seems like you need to set your boot devices priority up again in bios. I agree with the others you should look at a better ps. A low voltage at boot may be causing drives to not be detected.

 

[Wetmelon]

RESOLVED!

I am officially an idiot.

I ALMOST blew up my whole computer. Turns out, I had plugged one of the Molex-6pin adapters into - Not my power supply, but into a fan cable. I was shorting the friggin motherboard through my GPU! No power was getting to my HDD! No damage done, though ... Pure LUCK

And I'm supposedly in Computer Engineering :/

Thanks for the help guys,
Melon

 

[Wetmelon]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4899301&CatId=3669

HD 4870... I just keep calling it an "x4870" old habit I guess

 

[silvergo]

damn 175 ish? isnt that kinda expensive? the Xfx and saphire 4870 1 gb goes for 145-160 on new egg.

 

[megamanx00]

Doh.

Yup, you're lucky you didn't toast the thing. Of course that Coolmax isn't exactly best PSU.