Adding a 9800GTX to a Dell Vostro 400

[roscoe77]

I've got a Dell Vostro 400 at work and am allowed to add my own graphics card. So I bought with work's money a GeForce 9800 GTX which it turns out requires a 400w PSU minimum. So I buy a 450w PSU which works fine but when I put the card in the PCI-E slot the machine wont power up - the power switch which normally go blue when power is on goes orange instead which according to Dell's documentation means "there may be a power problem or an
internal device malfunction". I cant see how the PSU is the problem now I've upgraded it but I cant check if the card is ok on any other machine in the office as they're all Dell's.

If anyone has any tricks up their sleeve or any other advice I'd be very grateful as I'm ready to give up on the whole idea!

Thanks.

 

[Harvey]

Try removing and re-inserting the card. If it is in slightly out of alignment, a contact may be shorting to an adjacent connection, triggering the power supply protection circuitry. Also check any other plug in cards and your RAM.

Good luck.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Which PSU did you buy, and what are the rest of the system specs?

Also, just curious, why are you adding a gaming graphics card to a work computer?

 

[Jesusthewererabbit]

Did you connect the PCI-E power connector to the card?

 

[roscoe77]

Well the reason for installing the card was to help the machine along as sometime even with 4gb RAM it slows down while running Dreamweaver and Fireworks and Flash CS4 at the same time. I got the card cheap off a friend it so happens to be aimed more at gaming and it helps it has the DVI out put too.

I have tried the card with and without the power supply directly from the PSU as there is a spare lead for the card off the PSU.

The PSU is called "Octigen 450W Designed for ATX12v and SFX 12V" and without the card installed runs perfectly.

The specs as far as I know are standard garbage Intel Graphics Accelerator, Intel Core 2 Duo (E4500) @ 2.2GHz, Windows 7, 2x500gb hard drives. Not sure what else to add here - I can post a full Belarc report if it helps?

Thanks.

 

[CurseTheSky]

The power supply might not be up to the task. As far as I can remember, Dell has always used decent PSUs in their systems, but maybe that has changed? Does the PSU have a list of amps on each rail? Particularly any +12v rails.

And, if you got the card cheap and were previously stuck with integrated Intel graphics, I don't blame you at all. I'd do the same thing.

 

[StarBlast]

If your system came with the LiteOn 350W PSU with a 6-pin PCIe connector for a video card, you may want to put it back in and connect the card to it to see how it runs. The 9800GTX of course does not need 400 watts. Your entire system will probably only draw around 250 watts with the card so I would give it a try as the Dell power supplies are underrated. If everything else checks out, there could just be something about that new power supply you put in and running the card. You might also want to check to see what BIOS version you have as it could be an issue with the card.