Dead mobo? PSU? (1 Viewer)

[ReaveR]

So, I came home from uni today to find my computer off.
It appears there was a power failure whilst I was at uni.
Subsequent attempts to boot it failed.

It will turn on, but that's it. Fans spin, LEDs light up, no HDD clicking but i can't hear if they're spinning or anything.
The front LEDs, power and HDD activity are permanently lit.

There is no video signal on either of my two graphics cards.

There are no beeps. No beeps is scary

For what it's worth, specs are:
Gigabyte K8NNXP w/A64 3200+ s754
2x 512 pc3200
2x 80gig Seagates
2x DVD burners
9600XT
FX5200
SB Audigy 2 ZS
A Gigabyte digital TV tuner

I'm gonna try take everything out except the bare minimums and see if it'll post or anything, but in the meantime anyone got any suggestions?

 

[ReaveR]

Ah right, cheers. I'll take a look tomorrow as I don't have any spare PSU around.

 

[Al Capone]

yeh mine got fucked similarly like that
but mine was on when it blew. it was like a small firework going off. when i turn it on nothing happens - like the power button doesnt work. i used the psu of my otherworking computer and it still doesnt work. it must be the mobo or cpu, but id assume mobo first coz it doesn't even turn on. how unlucky ay... got the mobo not long ago

 

[SashatheMan]

i connected a CD drive while the Pc was on and blew the PSU . i am such an idiot. had to buy i new one.

 

[ReaveR]

Make sure to tell us what happens, that should tell us more about the problem.

Well, I fixed it.
Mobo and PSU are fine... would you believe, both the graphics cards are dead. I just took them both out and it went through POST. Put either of them back in and it won't POST. I would've thought it'd still beep angrily at me but I guess not.

I had previously only tested with either card in, didn't think both could die together. Running on an ancient GF2 GTS now but at least my will be working throughout my exams *cough* MSN *cough*

This of course gives me an excuse to go and spend a darstardly amount of money on a new card, I was thinking 6600GT as a minimum and maybe up to a 6800 vanilla and unlock the pipelines.. what does everyone think?

 

[Al Capone]

This of course gives me an excuse to go and spend a darstardly amount of money on a new card, I was thinking 6600GT as a minimum and maybe up to a 6800 vanilla and unlock the pipelines.. what does everyone think?

haha great minds think alike
im gonna have to buy somehting like that too coz my gfx card blew up as well in the power surge or whatever. it wouldnt work on my other comp so it must have blown too. im thinking something like that card as well..

 

[ReaveR]

Hey you were pretty unlucky man. If there was smoke and sparkles prolly your PSU carcked it and took everything else along the way.. did anything else from ther puter work in the working one? If not, bad luck

 

[Collin]

How are you running a Gf FX and a Radeon 9600 together? =S

Roll a dice because not all 6800 Vanillas will unlock successfully. If you're willing to make 16 pipes the gambit, then sure. Otherwise play it safe and get a 6600GT.

 

[ReaveR]

FX is PCI.
Never had any problems in regards to conflicts or anything either, except when someone tried to make me play ROSEonline and it would only detect my FX

I wouldn't mind taking the chance, in the worst case and it doesn't unlock successfully it should still be better than a 6600GT (at least with all the eye candy on) yeah? I'd want it to last me a few years.

 

[Collin]

I don't understand why you do it though, I mean it's not like they work like a stack (i.e performances of both cards are added, like SLi configurations).. so I would just imagine you switch either to the FX or the Radeon. Not to sound rude, but I don't really understand the purpose of such a configuration.

As for 6600GT vs. 6800 Vanilla.. last time I checked the 6800 costs around 1/3 more.
When it comes down to performance, the 6600GT is pretty much neck to neck with the 6800 on low settings (no AA/AF etc.). When you put on AA/AF, the 6800 starts to jump away a tiny bit (see paragraph under this). Now you may argue that you intend to play with high AA/AF with high res.. hence let's forget about the 6600GT altogether. But be careful since for some new games (F.E.A.R, Quake 4 etc.), playing it at high res with high AA/AF on a Vanilla 6800 (assuming the pipe unlocking failed) isn't really feasible in terms of frame rates.. and in this case you might need to revert back to lower settings, which of course performs similarly to a 6600GT anyway (and you save some money on it too).

The worst thing though, is that even on higher settings the performance increase of the Vanilla over the 6800GT is pretty minimal, at best for many titles. For example, Anandtech did a benchmark comparison in November last year in HL2, where with no AA/AF.. they both pretty much tied at any res. Then AA was cranked up to 4x.. and performance was a measly 3-4% plus.

Apparently some people suggest that the unlocking failure rate can be even over 50%. Also I heard some of the newer shipments of the 6800s are getting worse in terms of success rate. Another thing apparently seeked off nVidia was that some 6800's 16 pipes were screwed, so they disabled 4, declocked it and sold it as a Vanilla (i.e if you got one of those cards, there would be a 0% chance of success). Just consider the factors labelled in this and the above paragraph and make your choice wisely.

 

[Suvat]

What's the best AGP card which a 230w power supply can handle?
I'm running a p4 3.0, 1 stick of pc2700 512 ram, 80gig 7200rpm HD, a dvd rom, dvd burner and currently a Geforce MX440 128mb AGP 8x and it seems to run fine atm. I was thinking about upgrading to a 6800 ultra (the best card for AGP as far as I know) but then I learned that it requires at least a 300w-400w power supply. So what do you guys think is the best card which I can get assuming I don't upgrade the power supply?

 

[Collin]

Actually.. 6800Ultra requires around 480W (remember it's a dual slot monster that also requires two molex power connections to the PSU). The 6800GT, X800PRO & X800XT-PE can run fine with 400W.

As for your system.. to be honest all those components you have there should actually be squeezing out around 260-280W.. so I reckon you're already pushing it with that 230W. Gf4s use about 35W of power. The 'Ultra' versions of higher end nVidia cards tend to use alot of power.. e.g FX5950, 6800 Ultra etc. Most Radeon 9xxx cards use around 50W of power.. around 1.5 times of your card right now. But be wary, Radeon 9800XTs (not that you would buy one of those right now anyway) are power hungry bastards.

Hate sounding cliche, but your PSU feeds everything. You want a reliable PSU and one that's feeding adequate power to all your components without question. When a PSU fails, it can take out some of your critical components too.. lots of people overlook the importance of the PSU when building. So what I'm trying to say is, if you're going to get a decent video card, you should upgrade the PSU too because you're really pushing it.

 

[ReaveR]

I don't understand why you do it though, I mean it's not like they work like a stack (i.e performances of both cards are added, like SLi configurations).. so I would just imagine you switch either to the FX or the Radeon. Not to sound rude, but I don't really understand the purpose of such a configuration.

I [used to] run two monitors. That's the only reason I used the FX. Granted, I can run both on the Radeon but the FX was lying around from a friends dead box, and he gave it to me. I thought I'd squeeze the extra 2fps from it not having to render on the other monitor.

Apparently some people suggest that the unlocking failure rate can be even over 50%. Also I heard some of the newer shipments of the 6800s are getting worse in terms of success rate. Another thing apparently seeked off nVidia was that some 6800's 16 pipes were screwed, so they disabled 4, declocked it and sold it as a Vanilla (i.e if you got one of those cards, there would be a 0% chance of success). Just consider the factors labelled in this and the above paragraph and make your choice wisely.

Yep I read all about it when I got excited about it, but this is why I'm unsure now. I read about the theory that Nvidia chucks the retard chips that don't make Ultra/GT grade on to the vanilla and LE models, I thought that was pretty funny..

But a 4% gain is pretty minimal, stock for stock..

 

[Suvat]

Thanks for your advice JKD!

Are PSU's easy to replace by yourself considering I've *never* opened up my comp before.

Also, what do you mean by dual slot? My motherboard only has 1 AGP slot as far as I know....

 

[Collin]

ReaveR, you a StarCraft player? Just wondering because of your BOS name. Anyway, yes the performance increase is minimal.. hence one reason why I do personally prefer the 6600GT over the 6800 Vanilla.

Suvat: You're welcome. PSUs are reasonable easy to replace, the hard part being reconnecting all the molex cables (I'll get into that later). First, you just open up the case, disconnect all the power cables from all the components (there are a few power rails from the PSU to the various components of your system.. like the HD, optical drives, video card etc. these cables are referred to as molex cables. Each molex cable can actually comprise of several small cables.. but just bound together. The usual colours of each of those little cables are black, red or yellow.) Then take out the screws currently holding the PSU to the case, simply remove your old PSU, put in the new one, screw it back on and then simply reconnect all those molex cables to their respective devices and you're done. It's pretty simple, just make sure all the molex cables are reconnected.. since obviously if you forget one, that particular device won't work when you boot up.

Finally, make sure you get a decent PSU. Don't skimp on PSUs.. they feed your system. If you get an unreliable PSU, you jeopardise the integrity of all the components which feed from it. That's one reason to never buy 'generic' brand PSUs. Antec and Thermaltake make some pretty good PSUs, in my opinion.