P4P800-E Deluxe - saga continues - this time no video post on power-up + different BIOS full screen

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Technik

After all this could be a too small a power supply issue.
I've got rid of random Windows XPSP2 lock-ups by separating USB iFeel
mouse from Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard combo. However, I've
noticed yesterday that after shutting down the system, power up would
not post video. The system came on (fans, hdds and all the rest) but
no video post happened. I've had to pull the plug on power supply,
plug it back it and presto system is booting. I've reseated all the
components and power plugs. Running ASUS probe temperatures, voltages
and fans' rpm are all within reasonable limits.
I've used one of these on-line PSU calculators and turns out that I
need a minimum of 370W power supply; so after all this could be my PSU
under powering the system. Or is it something else according to you?

Regarding BIOS full screen logo for my motherboard. Why is it showing
two different P4 logos every time I boot. One with HT (for
HyperThreading) and one without it. I haven't changed anything in the
BIOS - HyperThreading is always enabled; yet I've noticed that P4
logos (with and without HT) appear in random manner.

One more question:
Was anyone successfuly with ASUS EZFlash (Alt+F2 while booting) and
CD-ROM with BIOS file on it. I've burned DOS compatible ISO image
onto CD-RW with Nero - with only one file in the compilation -
P4PE800-E.ROM but I get: "P4P800-E.ROM" File cannot be found! message
when I try to use EZFlash. My LS-120 floppy is not recognized by
EZFlash at all.

/Technik

Case: ASUS TA-231
PSU: Enermax Whisper 350W
M/B: ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe H/W rev.1.02 - latest .inf Intel chipset
drivers installed; latest Marvel Yukon onboard LAN drivers installed
CPU: Intel (Prescott) 3.0GHz (1MB cache) 800MHz FSB
RAM: 2x Apacer 512MB CL 2.5 (not!!!) PC-3200
HDD: WDC 160GB PATA, WDC 160GB SATAII (main Operating System disk),
2xMaxtor 80GB SATA as RAID 0
FDD: Mitsubisihi LS-120 EIDE floppy
Sound: Creative SB Live! 5.1 24-bit
Video: BFG 6600GT 128MB (nVidia) latest WHQL certified drivers from
nVidia's web site v77.77
 
Technik said:
After all this could be a too small a power supply issue.
I've got rid of random Windows XPSP2 lock-ups by separating USB iFeel
mouse from Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard combo. However, I've
noticed yesterday that after shutting down the system, power up would
not post video. The system came on (fans, hdds and all the rest) but
no video post happened. I've had to pull the plug on power supply,
plug it back it and presto system is booting. I've reseated all the
components and power plugs. Running ASUS probe temperatures, voltages
and fans' rpm are all within reasonable limits.
I've used one of these on-line PSU calculators and turns out that I
need a minimum of 370W power supply; so after all this could be my PSU
under powering the system. Or is it something else according to you?

Regarding BIOS full screen logo for my motherboard. Why is it showing
two different P4 logos every time I boot. One with HT (for
HyperThreading) and one without it. I haven't changed anything in the
BIOS - HyperThreading is always enabled; yet I've noticed that P4
logos (with and without HT) appear in random manner.

One more question:
Was anyone successfuly with ASUS EZFlash (Alt+F2 while booting) and
CD-ROM with BIOS file on it. I've burned DOS compatible ISO image
onto CD-RW with Nero - with only one file in the compilation -
P4PE800-E.ROM but I get: "P4P800-E.ROM" File cannot be found! message
when I try to use EZFlash. My LS-120 floppy is not recognized by
EZFlash at all.

/Technik

Case: ASUS TA-231
PSU: Enermax Whisper 350W
M/B: ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe H/W rev.1.02 - latest .inf Intel chipset
drivers installed; latest Marvel Yukon onboard LAN drivers installed
CPU: Intel (Prescott) 3.0GHz (1MB cache) 800MHz FSB
RAM: 2x Apacer 512MB CL 2.5 (not!!!) PC-3200
HDD: WDC 160GB PATA, WDC 160GB SATAII (main Operating System disk),
2xMaxtor 80GB SATA as RAID 0
FDD: Mitsubisihi LS-120 EIDE floppy
Sound: Creative SB Live! 5.1 24-bit
Video: BFG 6600GT 128MB (nVidia) latest WHQL certified drivers from
nVidia's web site v77.77
Click to expand...

If you are still having stability problems, I think you have a
Marvell 88E8001 Ethernet chip. This chip is used on several Asus
motherboards. Apparently, the V8.25.2.3 driver has a problem,
and if you've been upgrading drivers lately, you could very well
be using that driver. This thread, on the Asus forum, recommends
rolling back to a previous version of driver.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/bbs_view....anguage=en-us&topic_page=1&page_cnt=5&recc=45

******
In terms of power, most all of the web sites that I've looked
at, that calculate power, are pessimistic. They tell you that
you need a monster power supply, when that simply isn't true.

There are several key power states for a system:

1) Startup in the BIOS. Video card draws "idle power". I've checked my
processor, and it drew about 1/2 power (which surprised me). Disk
drives have hefty power consumption during the spinup interval.
The general design intent on disks, is to not exceed 2 amps on the
disk drive +12V feed - the motor is supposed to be current limited,
and can only accelerate to the limits that 2 amps provide. (I have
seen a disk datasheet with current consumption higher than 2 amps,
and I don't understand whether they have given up on that ancient
requirement of a 2 amp ceiling or not.) So, a disk draws 2 x 12
+ 1 x 5 or about 29W at spinup. Since the processor is running at
half power, if you only have a couple disks, the startup current
is not higher than any other power state. If, on the other hand,
you have eight disk drives, then yes, you need to do a calculation
of your startup condition, then pick a supply with a peak rating
high enough to handle that (short term) requirement. In fact,
this is why some power supplies have a "peak" output rating - it
helps with calculations of the requirements at startup.

2) Desktop idle. This is not important, except to see if you are
meeting the minimum power consumption specs for the supply. If
you select a power supply which is "way to big" for a system, there
is a (slight) danger you won't draw enough current. Nothing bad
should happen, but the power supply may not meet its 5% accuracy
on regulation if you mess this up. I wouldn't lose any sleep
over this calculation...

3) Desktop 100%. There are two possible test cases. One is 100% CPU
with little video card activity. The other is the "gaming condition",
where the CPU may not be exactly at 100%, as it is waiting on the
video card to complete an operation of some kind. It turns out,
that to some extent, the total system power is about the same for
these two conditions (at least with a single video card - SLI is
likely different). If you are paranoid, what you can do is
combine the worst theoretical CPU power calculation, with the
power consumption of the video card when it is gaming or running
3DMark.

During desktop 100% condition, the disks are virtually idle. If
anything, you might consider one disk is busy, and you could look
up the "write power" for one of your disks, and include that in
a power calculation. If the computer futzes with the disks
enough, it cannot be running close enough to 100%, to max the
power consumption. If you are burning a DVD, it is possible the
DVD might draw close to the "boiler plate" power spec of [email protected]
and [email protected], but somehow I doubt it. At any rate, the disk feeding
the DVD burner, is virtually idle while the burn happens.

No web site calculator takes all of this into account. They take
max CPU based on TDP. They miscount DIMMs as all having the same
power consumption, which they do not (the second DIMM on a RAM
channel draws less power than the first). If you look at a DIMM
datasheet, using an industry standard cycle mix for the DIMM,
the power is about 5W for a DDR DIMM. Some sites use 10W or 20W
for a DIMM. Miscounting, and blindly maxing all factors at the
same time, is simply incorrect, and is how a 350W system ends
up needing a 500W power supply. As some of these web sites sell
power supplies, they are not exactly unbiased in this matter.

Getting good numbers for video cards is difficult. Xbitlabs
did several articles where they did power measurements on
video cards. Takaman web site uses power numbers they got from
an independent consultant (although those video cards listed are
older cards, and people are not likely to be using those cards
in new systems).
******

Having said all that, power supplies can become weak before they
die. If a system won't POST, you'd have to check the outputs with
a multimeter, to see if any of the outputs were low or not. That is
not very easy to do if the system is installed in its computer
case.

If you have more than one computer (like my small collection), it
is a good idea to have a spare supply handy anyway, just for occasions
like this. Your spare might end up being larger than a calculation
would show, so it can function as a spare for any of your computers.

If you are short of cash, life is tough. Sure, you can find a
power supply for $17, but what problem will it solve ? I would start
at least at the $50 level, and spend somewhere between $50-$100 to
get some kind of brand name supply.

This article says it better than I can.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56231

******

In terms of your flashing question, read your user manual like you
were a lawyer. The section on EZflash does not mention reading from
CDROM, only from floppy. The section on "CrashFree BIOS 2" mentions
both floppy and CDROM. The section on using AFUDOS with a DOS boot
floppy, leaves the file system capabilities to your imagination -
maybe you can use your C: drive under DOS ? In any case, based
on the description in the manual, I don't think EZflash is checking
the CDROM.

Maybe you can find a recipe to make a bootable DOS CD, then use
AFUDOS:

http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=bootable+DOS+CDROM

HTH,
Paul
 
Paul,
Thanks for the advise regarding Marvel latest drivers; I just rolled
them back to v7.21.1.3 (ASUS Support CD-ROM). I will let you know in
a week or more if this helped. I don't want to jump to conclusions
any more. I've had multimeter hooked on to the power supply for quite
a few hours. Turns out that my Enermax Whisper (350W) provides a
stable output ( +12 ==> 12.18 Volts, +5 ==> 5.08 Volts). So I will
stick to it and in them mean time I've installed Ubuntu 5.04 Linux to
see if that works for me. I will work in Linux half the time and in
Windows the other half + I will leave the machine on overnight running
Windows. It froze day before yesterday in the middle of the night but
this was still with the new (problematic) Yukon driver.

Thanks for all good advice again!
 
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