Bad card, or partially bad PSU?

Ok, on a secondary system I have:

Intel Pentium D 3.2Ghz with HT

D955XBK MOBO

4 GB Ram

Hitachi 250 GB HD

BFG 800 W PSU

ATI X1800 AIW Video card (yes I know, old but it was free)


There is a consistent problem of upon powering up it crashes after the XP loader screen, after resetting the system, it boots up, no problem, only seems to happen from a cold boot. When I removed the optic drive, it booted a lot faster, but from a cold boot in the OS the screen would go blank.

Another time when I had left something in the optic drive and it slowed down the boot process, it stopped right during the resetting of the PATA / SATA.

I did notice a red led going off right near the vid cards power connector right as I pressed the power button.

Once its had its issue and gets reset, no problems after that, runs everything, no crashes at all.

I'm relatively sure its the card, but not sure why, guess I cannot complain as it was free.

Nah, this psu has been on other systems and did not have the issue, though if I had it in the same plug as a CRT based TV(really large one) and turned it on it would reboot the puter...LOL.

Whats funny though on my main rig (graphics card may also be crappy though it could be compatibility but that is another story and well, vista64 has never been nice to me) has a really ultra high capacity psu, but never really draws all of it, on the AC end maybe 150 WATT, never seen a psu max out before. Though our electric bill is mainly from the damn projection TV downstairs 1800 frigging WATTS!

As for the old ATI X1800, that thing is long past warranty LOL, will probably have to get a simple card from a local store, dun need an ultra high end one for the secondary, just enough for halflife 2 engine.

Indeed, the mostly functional ATI card seems to be fine if I sleep the system instead of shutting it, as far as decisions on new cards, the only really hard part is it gonna be ATI or Nvida, as both have their pros and cons. One major thing is that it can do DirectX 9 (for main rig), they are already on 11 as I have heard.