Gpu overheat alarms & shutdowns...

[chuckberg]

Hello,
My friend just put a Corsair 850 watt power supply in his HP P6404y machine and tried to upgrade the Nvidia 9100 stock video card to an Nvidia GTX 460 and the machine would run fine, however when he tried to play games the machine would start beeping and shut down which is usually a symptom of a GPU overheat condition. He then returned the GTX460 and upgraded to a PNY GTX 470 thinking his first card was from a no-name vendor and the same problem occurs. He then put a large fan next to his computer with the side off and if the machine starts beeping he turns that on and can continue to run, but I told him that option is not recommended. There is nothing in the Bios to see what the settings are for heat monitoring on a GPU, and there is no log generated showing what the cause of the shutdown is. We have looked online for help and there is none available for this Pegatron m2n78-la motherboard made by Asus for HP. Is there any software
that allows us to monitor and change the settings for heat ranges on a GPU, or is there any other way to identify what the machine is monitoring for heat so we can try to fix this. The bios options are very limited so we really are stuck on this one. Please help!! Thanks





Chuck

P.S. Here is a link to the system specs. from HP.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02053862&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=4176379&lang=en

 

[purple stain]

Maybe you can recycle the HP PSU,how many Watts is it and how many amps are on the 12/v?

 

[Guest]

Wow you really killed my hopes and dreams.

I thought Fortron was a decent brand for PSUs.
It has: # Over-voltage Protection
# Over-current Protection
# Short-current Protection
# Passive Power Factor Correction (PFC)
+12V1DC 20A maximum
+12V2DC 20A maximum

But i guess i will wait a bit for a new one.

 

[wolfram23]

Well the over volt protection stuff is pretty standard, but look at the comparative Corsair PSU (430W)

+3.3V@20A, +5V@20A, +12V@28A, -12V@0.8A, +5VSB@3A

An extra 8 amps on the 12V, that's almost 30% higher.

 

[JDFan]

Well the over volt protection stuff is pretty standard, but look at the comparative Corsair PSU (430W)

+3.3V@20A, +5V@20A, +12V@28A, -12V@0.8A, +5VSB@3A

An extra 8 amps on the 12V, that's almost 30% higher.

You missed the fact that the Fortron product he has has 2 separate +12v rails @20A each According to his post -- though Newegg shows it as 2 +12v rails rated 15A + 14A ! (though it doesn't state the combined max amperage it would be fairly close to the Corsair also !!) -- FSP makes decent Power supplies and if it were brand new it could probably handle the 460 since he has only 2gb of RAM and a 95W CPU --- it's mainly just the fact it is 6 years old and will have degraded somewhat by now so doing so would be pushing it and might cause instability so better to get a new PSU at the same time!

 

[luvkush]

-Use MSI afterburner to set fan speeds automatically when the gpu gets hotter.
-I bet it's his CPU that's overheating. Use HWMonitor for watching temps.
-If he bought a corsair 650w psu i think you mentioned? than the problem isnt the PSU unless he's using stock PSU with the gtx470, than that may be the problem.
-Check to see if he used 4pin or 8pin power connector for the motherboard, if the mobo allows him to fit in a 8pin connector, than use it.
-Can't think of anything else at the moment.

 

[chuckberg]

Thanks for the input. We did return everything to the store (minus restock fee) after spending quite some time on several forums looking for an answer.

Asus makes the Mobo for HP, but brands the board as Pegatron and won't support any bios issues. Also the AMD Overdrive software doesn't even recognize the CPU/Mobo combo and won't run, so you can't use their software solution to modify CPU settings. What we ended up finding was that the voltage was set too high by HP at the factory and there is no way to return it back to the recommended voltages. If you go back on this very long blog you will see all of the upgraded parts we tried and nothing would fix the problem. We tried everything, but what we learned in the end is they lock down the bios settings on premade machines so you cannot make them do anything more than they were designed to do by the manufacturer. We no longer recommend buying premades and plan on upgrading them later....Easier to just build your own.

 

[chuckberg]

Ok, we think we have solved the problem!!! Even with the large power supply upgrade the issue appears to be with current Nvidia cards. Under CPUReview website they show the max wattage draw of each graphics chip. It looks like the Nvidia GTX 460 was pulling 160 watts and the next card we tried, the Nvidia GTX 470 was pulling 170 maximum watts. We tried and tried and couldn't get the system to work. Now, several months later, we gave it another try and used a Geforce 9700 GS PCI-E card and it worked just fine. The card wasn't fast enough, but it only had a max current draw of 82 watts. That got us to thinking it was the fact that the 9700 GS uses DDR3, and the newer Nvidia cards use DDR5, but after checking we found that had nothing to do with the problem. Next we dove into the voltage issue and grabbed a new ATI Radeon HD 5450 which also ran fine and had a maximum power draw of 20 watts. The card was underpowered for 3D graphics so we then jumped up to an ATI Radeon HD 6770 and again it worked just fine at 108 watts. Keep in mind we had returned all of our previous gear, but we did have a Thermaltake 500 watt PSU available so we had already put that in the machine as we thought the stock 300 watt PSU was a no-name, underpowered unit. So far he has played several games at high frame rates with no issues. Our final thought is that the Pegatron m2n78-la motherboard doesn't like the power draws of the newer Nvidia cards. Hopefully this helps you folks!! Wooohoo!! Ok, it's game time!!