Weirdest Problem I Have Ever Had (Gtx 260)

[SpamShadow]

Here's my setup:
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO
XFX GTX 260
4GB Gskill DDR3 1600
Phenom II x4 955
OCZ Fatal1ty 550w


The mobo refuses to detect the video card. When I start it up, even with the PCI-e bus chosen as the primary display controller, it still reverts to the integrated chip. So I disabled the integrated chip in the BIOS. Now the computer won't start at all. That's when things got weird....

When I start the computer up, everything starts up but the video card, and then nothing happens. Fans run, disks spin, but no display, no fan running on the card, nothing.

When I try to shut the computer off though, suddenly the video card comes to life, spinning its fan (it seems) as fast as it can. I let it sit as long as I was comfortable (a minute or so) and nothing happened, no display, no POST beep, nothing. So I switched off the PSU.

So clearly the card works and can be powered on, but for some reason it only works at really weird moments. I hate to suggest it, but you think the PSU isn't powerful enough? Seems like it should be able to cut it, I've heard of people running GTX 260s on 450W psus. Regardless, it should still start and at least POST.


Any thoughts? I'm getting pretty desperate. There's a lot of college student money at stake here.

thanks.

 

[SpamShadow]

I've been doing a lot of research, and from what I can tell, I need 36amps on the 12V rail to push this card? So my OCZ wouldn't be able to run it because it has two 12V rails pushing only 25amps. Does that make sense?

 

[wiinippongamer]

it needs 36 amps COMBINED to run, so the OCZ should be plenty for even an overclocked 260.

Is the card brand new or did you have it in a previous system? does the system post and work fine when using only the onboard?

I think it's the card that's bad, if everything works fine except it then you just got a defective card

 

[iam2thecrowe]

it should display something. its not going to be drawing anything near its max current on boot up. Have you plugged in the extra power connectors the card needs???

 

[SpamShadow]

Its a brand new card, and yeah I plugged in both 6pin PCI-E power connectors. I don't know what to think. I had a similar problem with my last card, an AGP Radeon HD. I'll fight with it some more, but I guess if all else fails I'll RMA.

Tired of paying shipping fees for companies making DOA cards all the time...

 

[nforce4max]

Something doesn't add up. Is that the same psu that you were using with the agp card?

 

[SpamShadow]

Yes.

 

[nforce4max]

Replace it or have it tested in another machine.

 

[SpamShadow]

Sounds like a good call. I just talked to one of my profs who said he had a similar problem with a dual pci-e power plug card and the issue was with the PSU, he said he temporarily fixed it by swapping out the PCI-e power cables. I might just pick up a new power supply and skip out on fussing with the one I have now.

How's this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

 

[SpamShadow]

I downloaded Speedfan to check my system temps and such, and it won't start. It starts up, starts scanning for sensors and such, and just freezes there. This is like the same problem I had before on my old system (with the agp card). I don't understand. Could a power supply be causing that?

 

[nforce4max]

I think that you got a lemon meaning that you were unlucky and got a faulty unit. Go ahead and replace it. Bad units can cause a lot of interesting problems with machines that on rare occasions can be somewhat unique. US or EU? If you live in an area that has a lot of surges and outages that can weaken a psu if the machine is on or unprotected. As for me I have been very lucky thank God. A bad unit can have all sorts of problems such as spikes and dips that can damage other parts such as mainboard or any thing else.

Edit:

Your unite has an active PFC and got one similar to it but from Antec and I don't like it at all. Antec Ea650 and its rather fickle about things. Any big spike and it can do odds things to a unit that uses an active PFC (coil).

 

[SpamShadow]

So would you recommend a PSU without PFC or with a passive PFC?

 

[nforce4max]

I will have to look for something that is good and let you think of it.

Well just taking a quick look on newegg you are pretty much stuck using active PFC units so be sure to get a surge protector to help make sure that this doesn't happen again.

 

[SpamShadow]

There isn't any chance its the power switch on my case is it? The case and power supply were the only two things that carried over from my last build. I'm just asking because I thought maybe its shorting or something and making the computer boot up again when I try to shut it down.

 

[Guest]

Try to use a 2 molex to pci-e connector for a moment if you psu is fail to provide the power with one with 2 you will bypass that problem. But back screen you can take if the timing on memory on the card is not right and this can happen if the drivers of the other card are present boot from your onboard gpu remove the drivers and reboot if you see it working with simple vga driver of windows is safe you reboot go to the bios deactivate the onboard card close it an put the new card.

If the problem continues because the timing in the memory changed in bios you can reset the bios open the manual there is jumper on board and you close it for some seconds will do it for you if you don’t have a jumper to close it (it happens in some motherboards) remove the battery and wait 60 secs will do it for you.

Tell me if any of these solves your issue.

 

[SpamShadow]

Thanks for the ideas Giatrakis, but I've tried all that minus swapping out the pci-e connector with 2 molex connectors. I think I'm just going to pick up one of XFX's 650W single 12V rail psu's. I shorted out a case fan on this PS and ran it improperly set up a couple times. This apartment also seems to have poor wiring. When people hit light switches or run washers/dryers I can hear a pop in my speakers.

And I'm having more problems than the video card. The system just runs weird. I get odd BSODs more often than I'd like (usually during boot, so its most likely hardware related). Even with the card unplugged the computer still does odd things like restarting after I press the power button. I had odd problems like this with my previous system and the only things that carried over were the case and PS.

So chances are (imo) its the PS. It just always ran, sounded fine, lit up fine, and seemed to do its job so I figured it was fine. But I guess these things can die slowly and cause a lot of problems before they crap out.

 

[Guest]

I really din't knew you had and these problems boot in safe mode and try a sfc /scannow to see if any dll is in place first.

The 2 molex to pci-e will help you see if the power to card is the problem i mean the amps in the 12 volts rail problem can be bypassed with it.

If you gonna go for a new PSU anyway i suggest this baby here:

http://www.thermaltake.com/product_info.aspx?PARENT_CID=C_00001568&id=C_00001572&name=Toughpower+XT+875W&ov=n&ovid=

Is Thermaltake 875 watts bronze efficiency above 90% will make you forget any problem as it can CF any high end card out on the market now.

 

[SpamShadow]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I already placed my order, ended up going with an XFX model:

http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/psu/xxx/P1-650X-CAG9.aspx

It was relatively cheap, I don't need a ton of power because I have an Nvidia card in an AMD board, so no SLI. That should run my whole system well, 52amps on the 12V rail should be plenty. Has great reviews.

 

[nforce4max]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I already placed my order, ended up going with an XFX model:

http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/psu/xxx/P1-650X-CAG9.aspx

It was relatively cheap, I don't need a ton of power because I have an Nvidia card in an AMD board, so no SLI. That should run my whole system well, 52amps on the 12V rail should be plenty. Has great reviews.

Good choice of a unit but I will give you some good news though. There is a hack that I have used my self that enables the use of SLI on Intel and ATI chipsets. It is incredibly simple to do. Was using two 9800gt in sli till I moved over to a GTX460 1GB. My other rig is in my profile but out of date as I have changed it. You can sli with that unit.

 

[Guest]

I hope it will fix everything to you and put a smile in your face. I never had these problems because the psu is the first thing in mind when it comes to computers and I test it with digital polymeter if performs the way they claim in their sites. Having a psu that can fully operational in 105 C without drop millivolts is remarkable.

 

[SpamShadow]

New PSU came today, installed it. Nothing. In fact, more problems have come up. Windows is acting seriously weird. I just started it up and it said "Unable to load driver for Radeon display adapter." I had previously installed the drivers and even played Minecraft, worked fine. Now they didn't show up.

I went into the device manager to look at them and BSOD, flashed by so fast I couldn't even get the stop code. I did notice that it listed my processor as running at 802mhz when it should be at 3.2ghz...checked in BIOS and it says its running at 3.2ghz.

It restarted after the BSOD and got to "Start Windows" and hung there, nothing happened. Could it be the mobo? I've eliminated the PSU as the problem, and I would suspect the card but I've been getting so many other weird errors....

Edit: I realized that I had the memory inserted wrong for dual channel mode, so I put each module in a blue slot first. No post, seems like the memory failed to pass. I moved it over to the grey slots instead, that worked fine. Started up, video card drivers are here, playing L4D2 now, so I guess that's good.

I did forget one thing, when I was installing the heatsink, I slipped with a screwdriver (I know, really dumb move on my part) and stabbed the mobo, not real hard. I looked and there's a little scratch on it across a couple of the leads etched into the mobo. I asked around and was told that most likely if it was a problem the computer wouldn't boot, and the polymer layer on most mobos is pretty tough, so I just ignored it and moved on.

I'm just not sure where to go from here.

 

[wiinippongamer]

"Unable to load driver for Radeon display adapter." ....... so you installed readeon drivers for a gtx260? or were you using the onboard graphics on the motherboard? if so it could be the motherboard that's screwed up.

the 800mhz cpu is just a power saving feature, AMD's Cool n' Quiet, it's completely normal and always comes enabled by default, when a cpu intensive app kicks in it'll imediately switch to 3.2ghz, you can disable it from the bios if you want.

It could also be the HDD that just died, download parted magic and burn it to a cd, it's a opensource bootable partition software that also includes a handful of diagnostic tools, and run a test form there. Or just try the drive on a different machine.

Also check that the memory is running at the advertised voltages/timings

 

[nforce4max]

OK back to square one, do you have a different board to tinker with? I honestly thought that it was the psu and it still may have played a role but just working out common factors.

 

[SpamShadow]

wiinippongamer, Cool n' Quiet is pretty awesome if it can switch speeds on the fly like that, thanks. And I'm using the integrated card, the GTX260 won't start, at all, so in order to mess with BIOS/use windows I need to use the integrated card. The BIOS is set to always check the PCI-E slot though, so if the card ever starts to work that's what it will use.

I'll run some diagnostics on the HDD and memory to see if that turns up anything (memtest good enough?)

nforce4max, thanks for sticking with me, I do actually have a friend who built a very similar system to mine using a DDR3 AM3 board. How about I move my card over into his system (has 1000W psu, should be fine) and see if it starts over there? If it does that would point to the mobo correct?

 

[nforce4max]

I think so but what I am wondering is what is going on with the cpu's clocks being improperly reported. Try your card in your fiend"s machine and if it works as it is expected then its the board. I have been lucky when it comes to boards but once had two back to back dead boards with two more that slowly died with one dieing while my mom was using the machine. Boards are even more funky than psus when it comes to problems.