12V Aux Plug Causing Crashes???

[Undread]

Ok, i'll try to make this story as quick as I can:

Friend has an abit nf7 and a barton mobile 2500+, earlier today he got a new case, psu, and video card.

On his old setup (with a 300W PSU that had no aux plug and a geforce 2) he had 1 case fan on intake and had the barton at 2.4ghz (200x12) with a 1.9 vcore. The actual vcore was around 1.85 idle.

On his new setup with the True430 PSU he plugged in the 4-pin aux 12v, and left the rest as is. Has a total of 3 case fans now, and a vid card that needs a mutex plug (5900XT).

All of a sudden the system became really unstable and was crashing a lot. It would blackscreen and he would get alternating same length different tone beeps till he restarts. Even after lowering the cpu to 200x11 and 1.8 vcore in bios, it was still crashing sporadically.

When he unplugged the 4-pin the crashes went immediately away at 200x11. He hasn't tried 200x12 yet, but will be doing that shortly.

Anyway...anyone know why having the 12V aux plugged in would cause it to crash when it was previously stable? All I can think is the vcore was actually more stable than before, but why would that cause it to crash?

If anyone knows of something like this happening please let me know. Its not a huge[/B deal since he never had the 12v plugged in before, but he would like to figure out why.

 

[{PMS}fishy]

The two tone beep on an Abit MB is voltage/temp out of range.

Why that is happening I am not sure.

What are the reading on the PSU, when running under load?

The aux connector should help the MB, not cause any instability.

Have him try the old video card, and see if the problem presists.

 

[Undread]

So is it your belief that the vid is taking too much power? The vid takes it directly from a 4pin molex. He has 80 mm fans the video card 2 hd's and 2 5.25 devices. He isnt using any of the fan only's on the true430, just the regular molex's.

My guess was, he was running 1.9 vcore before...but it at 1.85 idle so even lower load, so now with the 12v aux plugged in it was 1.9 or maybe even higher actual. Is it possible that would cause the voltage out of bounds crash? I kind of doubt it but its worth a shot. I'm having him try 2.4ghz at 1.8V in bios now, hopefully that works.

I'll have him try the vid card also, I'll let you know.

 

[Gnufsh]

Take some voltage readings with a DMM from the 12v P4 connector and from the 12v line somewhere else, maybe the lines going to the connector are messed up somewhere? Is it actually supplying 12v? I was under the impression that using the P4 connector was supposed to increase stability as the NF7-S draws vcore from the 12v line, unlike many older athlon boards that used the +5v line.

 

[Undread]

Funny resolution. Turns out when he got his new case it came with two usb and 1 firewire ports in the front (the antec 1080). The two usb have a single plug and the firewire has another plug. The mobo has two usb plugs, but no firewire plug (but they are both the same size *foreshadowing*).

So it turns out he plugged in the usb plug into 1 usb port on the mobo, and then the firewire into the other usb port on the mobo. Voile, System Instability. After unplugging it, his system went back to normal.

Although fixed, I find it odd that this would cause severe problems as it did. Oh well, live and learn.