I have a home brew system that I'm trying to get another
year or two of use out of before I bite the bullet with a
complete replacement:
AMD Barton 2500+ oc to ~2250mhz
Gigabyte GA-7VAX
EVGA 6200 LE AGP video card
Seasonic 330w power supply
plus one disk, cd & dvd burners, a couple of other PCI cards and a bunch of fans.
Anyhow, I recently upgraded to the Barton from a Semperon 2400+.
The system is still quite stable except when I try to run certain 3D graphic
applications (Bioshock, MS Virtual Earth 3D, Plants vs. Zombies, etc.) that
used to run sluggishly, and now run much better - but only for a couple
of minutes maybe - until the system spontaneously reboots or hangs.
My suspicions keep switching from the graphics card (pretty low end,
but also pretty low power in the scheme of things), to the power
supply (should be enough for this setup, and a reasonably good brand,
from what I read), to the mobo (always been a solid performer with
lot's of bios settings to fiddle with, but maybe showing it's age).
I've been reading up on power supplies and have come up with this:
The Seasonic is a "dual 12v rail" power supply with specs that say:
12V1 - 8amps
12V2 - 14amps
I was trying to figure out exactly what in my system was connected to
which rail, which is no easy feat. I managed to find the ATX12V 1.2
spec which, lo and behold, shows an example of these specs as "typical"
of a 300w PS. So far so good.
The GA-7vax and 6200 LE don't use the aux power connector, so ALL
the power for the CPU & graphics cards (and other cards and some
of the fans) comes through the 20pin ATX main power mobo connector
which the ATX 2.0 spec hints gets 12V from the 12V1 rail. Surprisingly,
the disk, cd/dvd drives, and other case fans that use a standard 4-pin
molex power connector ALSO appear to be drawing power from 12V1 rail
per the ATX spec! (It seems ONLY the special 4-pin AUX 12v connector
which is also part of the newer 24-pin power connector draws from the
12V2 rail??)
In any event, it appears my entire system is running off the 12V1 rail
which is limited to 8amps! Is that possible??
As a potential solution, I was thinking of modding the power supply
connectors and replacing the 12v pin of the 20pin main power connector,
with the one from the 4-pin 12v aux connector drawing from 12V2.
Any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance!
year or two of use out of before I bite the bullet with a
complete replacement:
AMD Barton 2500+ oc to ~2250mhz
Gigabyte GA-7VAX
EVGA 6200 LE AGP video card
Seasonic 330w power supply
plus one disk, cd & dvd burners, a couple of other PCI cards and a bunch of fans.
Anyhow, I recently upgraded to the Barton from a Semperon 2400+.
The system is still quite stable except when I try to run certain 3D graphic
applications (Bioshock, MS Virtual Earth 3D, Plants vs. Zombies, etc.) that
used to run sluggishly, and now run much better - but only for a couple
of minutes maybe - until the system spontaneously reboots or hangs.
My suspicions keep switching from the graphics card (pretty low end,
but also pretty low power in the scheme of things), to the power
supply (should be enough for this setup, and a reasonably good brand,
from what I read), to the mobo (always been a solid performer with
lot's of bios settings to fiddle with, but maybe showing it's age).
I've been reading up on power supplies and have come up with this:
The Seasonic is a "dual 12v rail" power supply with specs that say:
12V1 - 8amps
12V2 - 14amps
I was trying to figure out exactly what in my system was connected to
which rail, which is no easy feat. I managed to find the ATX12V 1.2
spec which, lo and behold, shows an example of these specs as "typical"
of a 300w PS. So far so good.
The GA-7vax and 6200 LE don't use the aux power connector, so ALL
the power for the CPU & graphics cards (and other cards and some
of the fans) comes through the 20pin ATX main power mobo connector
which the ATX 2.0 spec hints gets 12V from the 12V1 rail. Surprisingly,
the disk, cd/dvd drives, and other case fans that use a standard 4-pin
molex power connector ALSO appear to be drawing power from 12V1 rail
per the ATX spec! (It seems ONLY the special 4-pin AUX 12v connector
which is also part of the newer 24-pin power connector draws from the
12V2 rail??)
In any event, it appears my entire system is running off the 12V1 rail
which is limited to 8amps! Is that possible??
As a potential solution, I was thinking of modding the power supply
connectors and replacing the 12v pin of the 20pin main power connector,
with the one from the 4-pin 12v aux connector drawing from 12V2.
Any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance!