My 8800 card crashed

in my opinion consistently getting no display on POST leans me toward hardware issue/incompatibility, not a power issue. Trying to get people to play with multimeters isnt exactly an easy task unfortunately, sounds too technical.

 

Lol, you put it in the correct holes. If you can't do that then well.... your life truly sucks.

 

Better to be safe, you know someone will manage to do this,

 

If find you can boot with the spare PSU, that at least pretty much pinpoints the problem. You can then stop wasting time and money and buy exactly the replacement part you need.

 

Antec PSU's have seen a big dropoff in quality over the years. Ironically I get better durabiliy out of genric granded PSU's than Antecs now.

I have had luck with coolmax and thermaltake PSU's lately.

 

again, people are running systems on 350Watt PSUs, i have no doubt 400W would be enough.

Really, well Antec True550 humming quietly away here working perfectly after my 670 Watt enermax cooked itself and half my computer components. I dont share the same view as you and a few others in this thread. As far as Antec is concerned, i got what i paid for. Also have a Antec Neopower 480 thats going on 2.5years now.

 

Maybe you missed the bit where I told you that your rig was pulling less than 200W. So I'll repeat myself. Your rig is pulling less than 200W.

That's: your rig is pulling less than 200W.

Just in case there's any doubt. kthx.

 

Here's my experience with Antec PSUs.

I had an Antec True 550 die on me around three years ago. Everything was perfectly fine until I went through a power cycle. That is when everything went wrong. After hearing a snap of sorts, smelling burnt electronics, seeing blue smoke, and uttering obscenities, I began the troubleshooting effort. Fortunately, the only thing damaged was the PSU itself.

Fortunately I still had a spare PSU that I ran with before I came across the Antec True 550, the Antec True 480. The system worked fine with that. Until about nine months to a year later that died in the same horrific way.

Needless to say, I wont be using Antec PSUs for my rigs anymore.

 

Yeah not too impressed with Antec myself. Probably the flakiest big name brand PSU reseller. I bought a 400 watt Antec unit back when the 9700 pro launched and it couldn't handle that system. And a couple years ago I got their Phantom 500 for low noise, and once again it was an overrated piece of dung. Performed worse than my 350 watt FSP PSU.

Myself I'm partial to FSP (Fortron Source) PSUs. They also make most of the PSUs for OCZ as well as some for Thermaltake and others. I still have an old 250 watt FSP PSU that I've been using almost continuously since 1996 or so.

If you have a friend with a decent rig, I'd try it out in their system. If it works there it's definitely not the card.

Personally I'm more inclined to think it's either the PSU or the Motherboard. Flaky power handling by the motherboard can produce the same symptoms that you're seeing, as would a flaky PSU.

There's also a chance that the wires for your PSU might be damaged.

Regards,
SB

 

I have never had a problem with antecs myself. I have with enermax and countless other no name supplies.

Perhaps antec's quality has dropped, but I certainly haven't seen it and don't believe it from a few anecdotal examples.

 

True I may have just been extremely unlucky with the Antec's. However, I've only owned 2 Antecs and both have proven to be far worse in quality than the other 12 or so PSU's I've used.

Then again I've also still got an IBM "Deathstar" 75 GXP that's rolling along 24/7 ever since I got it. While every single Maxtor and WD drive I've gotten has died (or is dying) a rather horrible death. In fact, I have an enterprise 400 gig WD drive that is now screaming like a woman being tortured that I need to replace. /sigh. I'd first thought it was the Hitachi 7k250 in the same drive cage that was dying since it's a couple years older, but nope.

So as always, your mileage may vary.

Regards,
SB

I still think his issue is either flaky PSU, flaky powerhandling on the MB, or faulty PSU wires.

 

FYI: I *have* had cards that wouldn't work in a specific system. It required that I put in an older card, boot, flash the mobo bios, and then put in the new card... then it worked. No clue as to why.

However, in this case the card never worked prior to flashing the bios and the whole machine wouldn't POST at all. If I remember correctly this was an older AMD shuttle XPC and a Nvidia 6600 card. I think.

Any how, best bet is to drop the card in a different machine and see if it works. I just ordered my first PCIE system, so I hope I don't have any problems... I don't have a secondary system with PCIE connectors in case I need to test something.

 

antec power supplies suck ass.

i've heard stories of them blowing sparks out, and nearly burned homes down.

i'm not lying.

pc power quad 750w silencers don't cost much more if you buy them dir. from pc power, even though it's said to be tagan.

i also think Antec's cases suck ass, too, compared what's on the market (sunbeam cases, notably) including the popular p180. that damn thing is hard as shit to get put together, and it's fan placement is stupid as shit.

 

work on that vocabulary. By the way Antec never said anything bad about you.

 

The signs of a sleeve bearing fan starting to wear out I'd say. You could have tried replacing it if the whole unit hadn't been defective.

It's not a terribly complicated procedure, I've done it myself once or twice and I'm not a terribly handy preson. so it's not that hard.

Unplug the PC from the wall socket and press the power switch a couple times before you open up the chassis and start unplugging connectors. People say you should watch out for the caps still, but I think they ought to be flat after going through that procedure. Maybe it doesn't hurt to be cautious. Heh.

Only stumbling block I can think of is that some PSUs don't use three-pin fan connectors internally but rather just 2 pins. You can usually put a 3-pin connector on a 2-pin header tho. Just leave the RPM signal floating (typically yellow wire as you may know).

Generally speaking PC hardware don't consume nearly as much power as manufacturer recommendations might hint at. You could always try and see if it works, nothing should explode. Mayb edownclock your CPU first manually via BIOS if you're worried.

Peace.