Power supply noob... is it the PSU, or is it sumthin' else?

[SickBoy]

It's been forever since I posted here, but as always it's a great place for good information.

Just today I installed a new motherboard and CPU to replace my dead MSI K7TPro2-A and not-so dead Duron 800.

The board is the ECS K7S5A, and the processor is an Athlon XP 1800+

My system's got an older Topower (who? what?) 300W PSU.

On install, the board posted, which is more than I can say for the MSI board. And the system runs fairly stable. But not all is well in paradise.

Here are the issues I'm facing:

- System defaulted to 1150MHz on startup. Adjusting to 133MHz makes the board recognize the processor properly, but computer hangs while loading Windows (98SE if it matters)

- Some CD-ROM issues. Tried loading up a few games -- SimCity 4, SimGolf -- and it seemed like the drive would access, stop, then access and stop again. This applies to both my CD-ROM and CD-R drives.

- CD-RW issues. Trying to format CD-RW discs so I can wipe most of my HDD and install Windows fresh. But during the crappy DirectCD format process, it just stops working, gives a quick error message and quits. I'm not sure if it's related to the cruddy Memorex media I bought or something else. (for the record I've never tried the discs before. I was just getting ready for a big backup when my old motherboard died)

And that's it so far. I could handle the slower clock speed, since my number one desire was to have a functioning computer, but other issues in addition to it mean there's a problem.

For the record, here are the hardware monitor readings from the BIOS. Being totally unfamiliar with anything power-related, I don't know what any of this crap means.

Vcore: 1.504
Vcc2.5v: 2.464
Vcc3.3v: 3.232
Vcc5v: 4.784
+12V: 12.160
SB3V: 3.280
SB5V: 4.865
VBAT: 3.296

And I'm running the following hardware:

1800+ processor, obviously
MSI GeForce2MX
SBLive!
384MB PC133 RAM
40GB Maxtor HD
CD-ROM drive (creative)
CD-R/RW drive (ancient HP model)
floppy.

I've also got a NIC card and a PCI modem that are in the case, but I'm pretty sure they're as yet uninstalled.

...is the power supply the likely culprit, or should I be looking elsewhere? And if it is the PSU, what should I look for without breaking the bank? This upgrade was supposed to be cheap! 🙂

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer.

-SB

 

[Duvie]

Definitely could be power related and seems symptomatic of power issues...The voltages are all low except the 12v rail which I believe is what supplies most of the drives, but I could be wrong. How do your fans do??? Do they seem like the noise or the whining of the fans fluctuate?? They usually run on 12v rail as well....

Look for a good amd recommended 300watt or better power supply and you should be fine.....


Sidenote...Is that 1800+ new??? I noticed cause the vcore is 1.5v and that islower then defult tbreds but rumor has it a new stepping athlon xp chip runs at 1.475v and is a great overclocker.....Many are getting these things to 2.4-2.6ghz on air with 1.8v or less...If not that also could be symptomatic cause that would be serious vcore undervolting....

 

[CheetahMk2]

No, I own that same setup [minus the 1.475v CPU, mine is 1.5v] and the voltages are all buggered to hell, on an Antec TruePower 350 at that. However, I did increase the voltage to 1.6 and the speed to 2143.... but that seems about as far as she'll go. My voltages? using MBM5:
3.3v: 3.15 5.0v 4.85 12v: 12.33

And I REALLY suspect the motherboard is just crappy. I mean, the PLL can't even give straight clock cycles, so I am guessing the voltage readings are off as well. I burn CD's with no problems.. and DVD's on occasion as well. I have two 120GB WD 7.2k hard drives in this, and I haven't and 'oddities' happen. What I DO need is a way to properly test the voltages. It seems to be giving my core +.3v more than I set with the pinmod...

 

[CheetahMk2]

Oh, FLASH THE BIOS! To the most current version off of a ***bootable CD***! There have been corruption issues with the previous BIOSes... I reccomend you go to the CheepoMan Bios homepage and flash with their latest K7S5a Pro bios... that'll unlock some stuff as well. Oh, and your booting to 100mhz? That's failsafe. It does that any time the CMOS is cleared.

 

[SickBoy]

Thanks for the replies, guys. I'm still a little befuddled, however.

The reason I'm booting to 100 MHz is because the machine hangs while booting up Windows at 133MHz.

I might give flashing the BIOS a shot, but I don't want to move to an unofficial BIOS while there's still the possibility I'll send the thing back.

Cheetah: are you running PC133, or DDR RAM? I 've heard the board isn't a big fan of older RAM...

-SB

 

[Cerb]

Could be PSU. First, however, remove the soundcard, NIC, and CD reader. Then try it. It could still be PSU, but that would at least remove some things. I've never used a Topower.
If you want to get a 300w PSU to see, go to Newegg and get the Fortron 300w. Nice quiet and heavy.
Also make sure that Vcore is right, and try various RAM sticks you might have around. The K7S5A Pro (rev 5) is very good about memory, but K7S5A rev 1 and rev 3 boards were picky.

 

[CheetahMk2]

I'm using Pc2700 ram.. I thought I could get this thing to go to 166, but if it weren't for thr damned PLL not letting it boot, I would. Believe me, you got a killer processor.. the problem is the board. YOu may need to do the pin-mode [www.ocinside.de] to change multipliers, voltages, etc.

The FSB problem you describe I don't know about... as long as it is in the right slot, it should work, right? Just try flashing the bios to the most recent, 2.20 by Cheepoman I think, and it should work. If not, ir may be the ram.... or the flaky BOARD! This is why Fry's was practically giving them away.. they were : /

 

[CheetahMk2]

oh, and your voltage seems fine. Just take the difference from 12v and divide by 12v and you will get your current tolerance. 5% is the goal, but sometimes 10% works too....

 

[Cerb]

I doubt it's a flaky board. It could be, but I've only had 1 bad ECS board, and my father hasn't even gotten one (lucky him, he gets paid to make sure 30+ K7S5As and now 10+ L7S7A2s work), and we've both gone through quite a number of them. All but 2 from Newegg.
Also, just now noticed the 384MB RAM. Bring yourself down to one stick, at least for testing purposes.

 

[dunkster]

This could simply be due to too-low Vcore.

Try bumping up your Vcore to 1.55V or even 1.6V to stabilize the system under load.

Hope this helps!

 

[Duvie]

Those ecs mobos do not have any voltage adjustments hence why they were quite poor overclockers...

Also it is tru the ecs mobos were historically quite picky and often times the debate was the board was so cheap but required a larger power supply and quality name brand...This is not new ppl!!!! My ecs mobo read volatges quite fine and so does the other 4 I built so I don't buy the acceptabiity of that as cheetah stated...

 

[wetcat007]

ECS can cause problems...

 

[SickBoy]

Thanks again for the help. I'm going to knock down the power draws -- take out my small stick of RAM, disconnect unimportant stuff and see what happens. I'm very interested to see if this is a power issue, & I'll report back.

The update so far (pre component removal): It seems like my Memorex CD-RW discs suck (a surprise? not really). I copied over a bunch of stuff on the one HP-branded disc I've got and it worked alright. I've got some other stuff I need to back up, however.

Some other CD software works fine. But with some of it not working at all, I'm scratching my head. I'm trying to prepare for a fresh Windows install and I want to backup first. More importantly, I want to be sure my CD-ROM drives are working all right, so the Install process doesn't fail at some point.

EDIT: And just as a side note, this is the Pro (Rev. 5) version of this motherboard.

-SB

 

[Cerb]

Verbatim discs do well, and survive anything. Imation are perfectly good for cheaper media.
If, at 100MHz FSB (who knows about memory and power, so run it slow for now), it fails installing windows, assume the mobo or PSU are bad (I got a bad L7S7A2...BSOD'd same place in windows install each time...K7S5A Pro worked). While I've never put crappy cheap memory in a socket Athlon board, you never know.
If your PSU is 2 years old or so with no AMD sticker on it, you aught to get a new one anyway...while less frequent, horror stories still occur. As noted, the Fortron from Newegg.