shutt;e frag box, 250w psu, need help

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truverman

ok i bought a shuttle mini box case with the mother board and a 250w
PSU i droped 400 bucks into it. in runs fr a bit and freezes, the
problem: the 9600xt and the athlon 64 bit 3000+ together take about
300w under full load, hence y it frooze during xp install.

so can anyone tell me what the bigest video card i can use will be?
the card can only draw 100w of power, which is still cutting it close.


i was thinkin a:

Rosewill RW5500-256D Geforce FX5500 256MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video
Card - Retail

will that work?thanks for reading please reply.
 
ok i bought a shuttle mini box case with the mother board and a 250w
PSU i droped 400 bucks into it. in runs fr a bit and freezes, the
problem: the 9600xt and the athlon 64 bit 3000+ together take about
300w under full load, hence y it frooze during xp install.

I suppose you took voltage readings?
An A64 3000 and a 9600XT do not use 300W, nor would those
and everything else combined in a mini cube system. That
doesn't necessarily mean the PSU is enough though, it may
still have insufficient amperage on one of it's rails.

so can anyone tell me what the bigest video card i can use will be?
the card can only draw 100w of power, which is still cutting it close.

Merely underclocking the card would be the easiest solution.
No matter what else you choose, the performance reduction
will coincide somewhat with the power reduction. If you
have the technical ability to volt-mod the card so that when
it's underclocked, it runs at lower voltage, that would be
the highest performance per watt you could hope for.



i was thinkin a:

Rosewill RW5500-256D Geforce FX5500 256MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video
Card - Retail

will that work?thanks for reading please reply.

FX5xxx series aren't so good at DX9 games. What did you
need use the card for? If you hadn't already had a R9600XT
I'd probably have suggested trying a (non-XT, plain) Radeon
9600. Beyond that, minor performance decreases will tend to
have minor current decreases, to get a fair margin you'd
have to drop down to a pretty slow card, maybe Radeon 9250.
 
This may not apply, but there is now a 300w version of the power supply.
I think it is around $80.

Clark
 
truverman said:
ok i bought a shuttle mini box case with the mother board and a 250w
PSU i droped 400 bucks into it. in runs fr a bit and freezes, the
problem: the 9600xt and the athlon 64 bit 3000+ together take about
300w under full load, hence y it frooze during xp install.

so can anyone tell me what the bigest video card i can use will be?
the card can only draw 100w of power, which is still cutting it close.


i was thinkin a:

Rosewill RW5500-256D Geforce FX5500 256MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video
Card - Retail

will that work?thanks for reading please reply.

A 9600 doesn't really draw that much power IIRC. Somehow it doesn't seem
highly likely to me that it is the sort of power problem you suspect
because during an installation neither the 9600 nor the processor will
be running at anything like full load. The video hits that state while
doing heavy 3D graphics and the processor during heavy-duty number
crunching and neither of those states describe an installation which is
pretty slow and sedate. Right now I'm typing on a Shuttle SB65G2 with an
ASUS 9600. The entire computer + the UPS + the LCD monitor + the
speakers + an external USB CD-RW have never hit 200W measured power
consumption under very heaving loading.

Which model Shuttle are you running? There have been some AMD + Shuttle
problems mentioned over at Sudhian's SFF forums but I haven't read them
carefully because my AMD isn't a Shuttle. You might consider joining
their forum and asking the question there -- they have some real experts
on Shuttle systems and at least one of the engineers from Shuttle visits
regularly. If this is a known problem then somebody there will have seen
it before. http://www.sudhian.com/
 
I suppose you took voltage readings?
An A64 3000 and a 9600XT do not use 300W, nor would those
and everything else combined in a mini cube system. That
doesn't necessarily mean the PSU is enough though, it may
still have insufficient amperage on one of it's rails.


it close.

Merely underclocking the card would be the easiest solution.
No matter what else you choose, the performance reduction
will coincide somewhat with the power reduction. If you
have the technical ability to volt-mod the card so that when
it's underclocked, it runs at lower voltage, that would be
the highest performance per watt you could hope for.





FX5xxx series aren't so good at DX9 games. What did you
need use the card for? If you hadn't already had a R9600XT
I'd probably have suggested trying a (non-XT, plain) Radeon
9600. Beyond that, minor performance decreases will tend to
have minor current decreases, to get a fair margin you'd
have to drop down to a pretty slow card, maybe Radeon 9250.

it was not the power consuption the problem was the card, i tried it
in my other desktop and it did the same thing, so guts for kicks i put
my 6800GT into the shuttle system and it ran fine, i played for about
2 hours and it was still great. so basically the card was a DOA and
newegg is going to get me a full refund.
 
This may not apply, but there is now a 300w version of the
power supply.
I think it is around $80.

Clark

Clark said:
This may not apply, but there is now a 300w version of the power
supply.
I think it is around .

naww its fine the card was doa.
 
With those mini-boxes you are almost forced by the minimal PSU's provided to
use a motherboard that has on-board video.
 
DaveW said:
With those mini-boxes you are almost forced by the minimal PSU's provided to
use a motherboard that has on-board video.


Not true at all. You can find Shuttle machines running even high power
video cards and the 250-300W supplies in the newer machines handle them
just fine. Of course one is force to perform some surgery to allow the
double-wide cards into, well into and out of, the case but it is done
pretty regularly. The newest Shuttle system (SN26 IIRC), just announced,
supports dual SLI video.
 
Not true at all. You can find Shuttle machines running even high power
video cards and the 250-300W supplies in the newer machines handle them
just fine. Of course one is force to perform some surgery to allow the
double-wide cards into, well into and out of, the case but it is done
pretty regularly. The newest Shuttle system (SN26 IIRC), just announced,
supports dual SLI video.


"Maybe", but then running in that kind of config long term
may result in a short-lived PSU... burning a candle at both
ends.
 
kony said:
"Maybe", but then running in that kind of config long term
may result in a short-lived PSU... burning a candle at both
ends.

I get the feeling that a lot of people are going way overboard on their
power supply "needs" and I'm at a loss to understand it. I guess it
could be that they are simply buying junk supplies that can't provide
what their ratings might suggest.

As an example of real world power usage I just checked my AMD box in the
basement. It is an 3500+ Venice with 1gB RAM, five hard drives (four
200gB PATA and one 160gB SATA), one DVD drive, floppy, flash reader, and
an ATI X700PRO with 256mB. Running a program which saturates the CPU (a
weather modeling client) the actual measured power consumption of the
computer never quite reaches 200W. That means that the PS is putting out
a max of 140-150W assuming it is highly efficient. Even if you allow
that I swapped in a real uber-videocard that consumes 100W more than the
current one you are still talking only 250W.

Take out three or four hard drives since the typical SFF computer only
has space for two drives at most and you are talking a consumption of
maybe 200W max. Even the more puny supplies that Shuttle sells, like the
one presently in my old SB65G2 are rated at 240W and they seem to be
well designed and actually manage to put out what they are rated for.
The newer Shuttle supplies are 300W and seem to be well rated and
reliable as their premium price would suggest.

Which eventually leads to the question: why do so many people seem
convinced that they need a 500+W supply to run their thoroughly average
systems? And we won't even touch the question of why they want to have a
half dozen screaming fans...

I guess I should have labeled this reply as "OT" since it is headed that
way fast. ;-)
 
John, according to the below website, and this is just an estimate since
I didn't find your exact processor or some other things, your power
supply should be at least 333 watts. And I only gave you 4 hard drives
and 2 case fans. Plus the site sells power supplies so they may over
estimate just a bit. ;)

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/Power_Supply_Calculator.php?cmd=AMD

I am sure a lot of it does depend on the quality of the power supply and
how well it handles the added current, but you must keep in mind that
the highest draw is normally at startup, and with 5 hard drives, yours
must be fairly large. Also, if you run a system with a barely adequate
supply, it might tend to run hotter than it should, and running in a
constant "brownout" type situation (I'm not saying you are) may tend to
shorten the life of the components.

So, my thinking is, that even though a huge power supply may not be
needed, one that is "more than adequate" is the best thing to do.

Clark
 
Clark said:
John, according to the below website, and this is just an estimate since
I didn't find your exact processor or some other things, your power
supply should be at least 333 watts. And I only gave you 4 hard drives
and 2 case fans. Plus the site sells power supplies so they may over
estimate just a bit. ;)

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/Power_Supply_Calculator.php?cmd=AMD

I am sure a lot of it does depend on the quality of the power supply and
how well it handles the added current, but you must keep in mind that
the highest draw is normally at startup, and with 5 hard drives, yours
must be fairly large. Also, if you run a system with a barely adequate
supply, it might tend to run hotter than it should, and running in a
constant "brownout" type situation (I'm not saying you are) may tend to
shorten the life of the components.

So, my thinking is, that even though a huge power supply may not be
needed, one that is "more than adequate" is the best thing to do.

Clark

The system I described is my "server" computer and it has a 450W PS in
it. Or at least the Antec case comes with a PS that they rate at 450W.
Also it has two 120mm fans, one beside the HD cage and one on the rear
but they are the Antec variable speed model and are switched to their
lowest rpm so they don't draw much power. The power input to the
computer spikes up close to 200W at startup when the drives spin up,
drops to <150W as Windoze starts, and finally rises to 185-195W as the
service which does the weather modeling finally starts and stabilizes.
But the power I'm quoting is the AC input, not the PS's DC output which
is where the power rating is derived and the DC power output is
certainly only 60-70% of the AC power input.

After having a number of systems running 24X7 under heavy load
performing distributed processing experiments for over 7 years I feel
confident that, if one has a really good PS such as one from PC Power &
Cooling or some other top-of-the-line manufacturer that a system can be
run at a goodly percentage of the rated power and suffer no ill effects
from it. If one is buying a cheap PS from an unknown company then I
guess buying the most "powerful" one available might be a good idea.
Reading the test results at TomsHardware where they subjected a series
of PSs to extended full-rated-power testing should be mandatory for
anyone contemplating a PS purchase.

Guess I've just about beaten that subject to death. <g>
 
I get the feeling that a lot of people are going way overboard on their
power supply "needs" and I'm at a loss to understand it. I guess it
could be that they are simply buying junk supplies that can't provide
what their ratings might suggest.

Yes, often they are buying generics that have overrated
wattage or are of poor construction. In other cases, they
may be trying to run too close to max output power.

If a system uses 200W continuously, the typical 300W
name-brand PSU is not a good match for long term use in a
reduced form-factor. Downsizing PSU (even "full-sized PS2
PSU in a PC) makes compromises, for example the fan size and
speed, or capacitor size. The heat density becomes
significant. This is not a hard rule, some designs are
certainly better than others but over the years I've even
seem Compaq "90W" PSU that were build disproprotionately
better for long term use than today's Antec 500W or
equivalent in most name-brands. In other words, PS2 (and
smaller) PSU form factor was not designed to scale
indefinitely, it was designed when systems used under 100W.
Systems expected to consume more had larger PSU.

As an example of real world power usage I just checked my AMD box in the
basement. It is an 3500+ Venice with 1gB RAM, five hard drives (four
200gB PATA and one 160gB SATA), one DVD drive, floppy, flash reader, and
an ATI X700PRO with 256mB. Running a program which saturates the CPU (a
weather modeling client) the actual measured power consumption of the
computer never quite reaches 200W. That means that the PS is putting out
a max of 140-150W assuming it is highly efficient. Even if you allow
that I swapped in a real uber-videocard that consumes 100W more than the
current one you are still talking only 250W.

OK, but what size is the PSU? If you had a
reduce-form-factor PSU with 1 cubic inch less space inside,
and the additional space is dedicated to larger part that is
less prone to fail, that is very significant. SFF boxes
have certain limitations.

Take out three or four hard drives since the typical SFF computer only
has space for two drives at most and you are talking a consumption of
maybe 200W max. Even the more puny supplies that Shuttle sells, like the
one presently in my old SB65G2 are rated at 240W and they seem to be
well designed and actually manage to put out what they are rated for.
The newer Shuttle supplies are 300W and seem to be well rated and
reliable as their premium price would suggest.

Which eventually leads to the question: why do so many people seem
convinced that they need a 500+W supply to run their thoroughly average
systems? And we won't even touch the question of why they want to have a
half dozen screaming fans...

Often they start out with a 300W generic, falsely assume the
reason it wasn't sufficient was that "300W" wasn't enough,
and choose a larger wattage PSU thinking that since it
works, insufficient wattage was the problem. It may've
easily been the problem but they had no baseline for what
that "300W" generic was actually able to output.

In other cases, lifespan in particular, it can be a matter
of price-points. A PSU only capable of 200W "could" be
built very well, as OEMs demonstrated for years. One could
swap less than a half dozen components and arguably call
same PSU a 500W model, but running the rest of the
components closer to max ratings will tend to reduce overall
lifespan. IF there were still quality 250W-300W PSU made
at higher price points, instead of budgetized construction,
they would be sufficient for most systems. Unfortunately to
get the quality build one is usually ending up with a 500W
unit even though they didn't need those watts as much as the
rest of the build quality that the higher price-point
allowed.

It doesn't have to be that way, careful PSU selection can
result in savings, but for many the time or experience to do
it isn't worth the difference in cost, they can just choose
a 500W PSU and hopefully have overshot the mark rather than
risk undershooting due to lacking the information to weed
through all the alternatives.

It also becomes harder to find units with very large
amperage on 12V rail unless one also has high amperage
potential on 5V rail, and too few people recognize which
rails their system loads the most. By buying the 500W PSU
they have both bases covered without having to know. It's
not necessary BUT without consideration of the particular
system's needs one cannot qualify a lesser wattage PSU very
easily. Then consider generics where they can't (or at
least shouldn't) trust the labeled capacity and this basic
lack of information makes it more cost and time effective
for an OEM to qualify units for thousands of systems than
the average Joe for only one or two.

I guess I should have labeled this reply as "OT" since it is headed that
way fast. ;-)


Nope, it's relevant... if people want to DIY, they tend to
go overboard the first time (or two or three...) then later
scaling back some with their next systems.
 
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