PSU drying or GFX card? Info incld.

dan15b

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Feb 15, 2010
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Hello, I'm in a quandry. Since I last restarted my PC, the video card has really been struggling (EVGA 8800GTS). This was after the most recent windows update, so I thought maybe it was a drivers issue and uninstalled then tried reinstalling the nVidia drivers, but according to device manager "This device cannot start." The drivers are installed but don't appear to be.

Accompanying this problem is colourful, glitchy lines throughout the BIOS menu and during windows startup (XP-SP3).

I was doing some reading up and learned that it might be that my PSU is dying, and I'd just like to get some confirmation on that. It's an Enermax Noisetaker II (600W) and has a fan dial on the side which I was just fiddling around with and it's sluggish to respond and seems to be functioning a lot weaker than I remember it. Could it be that I need a new PSU? I really don't have the money to replace both the PSU and GFX card, and I haven't had any other problems with the card.

Thanks
 

darklink5510

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Feb 6, 2010
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Well I think it is the power supply which are often known to be one of the first things to die on a computer (usually PSU's grow weaker overtime) and the videocard won't work because it's not getting enough power supplied to it.

I may not be right but from what I know that should be the problem.
 

Kewlx25

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it sounds very plausible. If your PSU has another rail, you could try switching to that one because each rail *should* have their own components. The main power does come in on shared components, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

Another thing you could try is to plug in a multimeter into a molex plug and see if you're getting ~12v on your 12v lines. Not to say that it might put out the voltage but not the amps.

Your best bet is to test another known working PSU in your system to help isolate variables.
 
1. Blow all the dust outta ya PC....don't forget inside GFX card and inside PSU.
2. Boot into safe mode and uninstall all GFX drivers.
3. USe registry cleaner or driversweeper to find and remove all orphaned GFX driver entries in registry.
4. reinstall latest gfx driver.
 

dan15b

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Feb 15, 2010
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thanks for the responses! i don't have a multimeter but i did check the bios hardware monitor and power values read normal across the board. i have also previously tried up and downgrading gfx card drivers, making use of driversweeper to be sure it was a clean erase. i always keep the components dust-free since the system is caseless and the gfx card has ample cooling in addition to the dual-slot evga heatsink/fan. i tried plugging the card into the other 12v connector and the problem remains the same, also tried unplugging all extra HDs and DVD drive and de-clocking the CPU and still the same issue.
 

Maridius

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Feb 15, 2010
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System:

Pentium D 950. 3.4 dual core "Presler"

Asus P5ND2-SLI
Chipset: nForce4 SLI Intel Edition
Bios: ASUS P5ND2-SLI ACPI BIOS Revision 0701

Nvidia 9800 gtx+

RAM: DDR2, 2 gigs at 333.3 mhz (2 sticks, 1 gig each, part#: OCZ2SOE6671G)

Power Supply: Model#: oczgxs600, 600 watts, an OCZ GameXStream Power Supply.


Hello, I have a similar problem. A while back I was surfing you tube and a bunch of artifacts came up on my screen, it froze and i had to re-boot my computer. The screen with my motherboard's logo was messed up and so was the windows loading and log on screen. I booted into safe mode and everything was still messed up except when i logged into windows there were 4 2cm wide bars going vertically up my screen. Everything next to these bars was perfectly fine but everything in the aforementioned area was blurred/messed up.

So I uninstalled nvidia, all the software that came with it and the drivers for the device and restarted. This seems to do the trick sometimes and when I load with a clean mobo screen I get out of safe mode, install my gpu and everything is back to normal. In trying to pervent this from happening again i run registry scans, spy bot and avast but never the less the computer still freezes up with artifacts on the screen, sometimes after 2 weeks and sometimes after 2 days.

I read around and aside from the possibility that the gpu might be faulty (fried RAM i believe was what a lot of people were having trouble with) i learned that it could also be the power supply's fault. I looked up the voltages of the psu in speedy fan and found that the 3.3 v rail is putting out 0 volts. The 5 v is putting out 4.95 v and the 12 is putting out 12.22 v. I am also getting a temperature reading of 73 c (which i know is not the gpu since i can cross check the temperature given to me by evga's software and it is most likely not the cpu as i just cleaned the heat sink and re-applied some thermal paste, even though i never saw temperatures that high 3 months ago when everything was working fine.) This same temperature reading jumps all the way to 127 c sometimes and just stays there, however when i feel the power supply and the air coming out of it it is not that hot. This same system has already burned out one power supply but when it did you could smell it in the air.

In addition, the computer just shut down today 3 times, once when i wasn't even using it. Could this also be pointing to the psu as the culprit? I am now running an nvidia 8600 gts perfectly fine, but maybe its because this gpu doesn't place nearly the amount of demand on the psu as the 9800 gts+.

Sorry for the long post, i didnt want to start another tread since I think the issue being discussed is the same. Thank you for your time!
 

Maridius

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Feb 15, 2010
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I doubt it as I have had this same system for over a year and a half and never had a proublem with the cpu. I even ran a program a couple weeks ago that completely used up my cpu for over 5 hours streight and everything was perfectly fine when I got back home. I will recheck to see if everything is seated properly and take a look at the temperatures but after I switched out the gpu's the computer has been running without a hitch.