power supply issues?

[mskalak]

ok, a friend of mine has a problem with his new Athlon XP and its on an Asus a7m266 , it posts at 266 fsb, but will crash as soon as his harddrives start to load something. He already downloaded and installed the bios revision to work with Athlon XP's. The processor runs fine at 200fsb. He used to have an Athlon 1.4 running at 266fsb, and that ran fine. Here's the specs on his comp

Asus a7m266
Athlon XP (i think its 1.8ghz)
2 7200rpm HDD's on a raid card
standard floppy drive
CD-RW
DVD-ROM
2 sticks of pc2100 ddr 256mb's
300w power supply

He called Asus, and they said that its a power supply issue. I thought for sure 300w would be plenty.

Thanks for your help

 

[minendo]

What brand PSU and is it on this list?

 

[mskalak]

well, i just called him, and he said he bought the case generic, and he can't find a name on it.

 

[minendo]

<< well, i just called him, and he said he bought the case generic, and he can't find a name on it. >>


Well then it very well could be the power supply. Is there any info given on the Power Supply?

 

[mskalak]

300w total power on +3.3 volts and on +5 volts 140w max
basically just the sticker that is put onto power supplies.

nothing else, no words. sorry i cant help u more, i dont know much about his comp

 

[mskalak]

ok, my friend borrowed a power supply from some other kid, its not on the listbut its the version before the antec 1...its a pp352x..and its 350 not 400 w, it still doesnt work. So, what does everyone think?, i have no idea what to tell him, thanks

 

[RustyNale]

The borrowed psu may be a higher wattage, but the XP line of AMD chips likes a good clean quality power source, his friends still might not be good enough for it. That said, if the only thing that's been changed is the cpu, it's suspect too. Try an AMD approved psu once, and if it still doesn't work, I'd rma the cpu.

 

[SmirnoffIsTasty]

Could be a heat issue. Try reseating your HSF, and applying new thermal sh1t.

 

[Kelvrick]

What do you mean crash? Like, does the screen black out? Does the computer completely turn off? Like, no power to fans?

It just might be the power supply. That antec should be fine. Try getting a quality name brand power supply like an enermax and see if it still doesn't work. Also, have you check whether the little switch on the powersupply is 110 and not 220?

 

[mskalak]

ok, well when he first put in the processor, it froze, as in the screan is still on, and it posts. when it gets ready to load windows, it stops. that happened 3 times, and on the 4th, it stopped after it counted the ram, before it checked for drives. with the new power supply, it froze while loading windows 3 times and then on the 4th, stopped after it counted ram and checked for drives. He also said that the first 3 times he restarted his computor, he would hold downt he power button for 4 seconds and it would turn off. after the first 3 times, it would not turn off, just immediately turn back on. both power supplies did exactly the same thing. he has had to unplug the computor to turn it off. he has the switch on the back on 110/120

thanks

 

[ttn1]

If you believe it is a power issue, which I'm not totally convinced of, then yank some of the peripherals. Such as remove both cdrom drives and one stick of ram. You could also remove all the cards except for the raid and video.

If it doesn't boot up after removing as many components as possible, then I would doubt that it is the power supply.

The other thing is what does the processor speed show up as at 200 fsb. He may be inadvertantly overclocking the processor by trying the 133 fsb.

I would check both the fsb and the multiplier to make sure everything is to the spec of the chip.