totally strange thing with new power supply...

[angrysquirrel]

Hi folks,

I had something bizzare happen with a new 300 watt power supply I got.

I have a 250watt in my atx case. I'm running an abit bh 6 motherboard with a celeron overclocked to 883mhz.

I just ordered a new mobo and processor (athalon xp 1800+ with ecs mobo).

Anyway, when I put the new PS in with my bh-6 setup my system would crash or not boot at all (black screen). So I set voltage on cpu to default (it was running at 1.95v with 250 watt). Then the thing wouldn't boot.

So I put my old one back in and it works. About a year ago my fan died so I went to upgrade my ps to 300 watt and the same thing happened with this mobo. Could it be that my bh-6 is just tempermental to a 300 watt power supply? This is the 2nd one and the board just doesn't seem to like it....

 

[RangerJoe]

that celeron doesnt need much power, you should be fine with a 250 watter...but for that xp 1800 chip...id get at least a 350 or 400 watt...(enermax or antec) 300 watts wouldnt be enough to power a full xp 1800 computer

 

[Monaco]

welcome to the forums, angrysquirrel!

That is indeed one weird problem! I've never seen anything like that before. To the motherboard, all power supplies are exactly the same- there's no interface besides a power draw. And I've seen overclocked Celerons running happily with 200watts or less.

First thing I'd do is I'd try to check that 300watter in another system, to see if it is broken or something.

Does the PSU have the funky P4 +12V connector on it? Someone told me that needs to be disabled before a PSU will work with regular ATX boards, but he could've been full of it. Worth a look I guess.

I don't remember any whack power regulation problems with the Bh6 or anything like that.

 

[angrysquirrel]

hello again

Thanks for welcoming me to the forums! I know it's totally strange.

Like I said it happened once before with this motherboard. I had my system about a year and then the power supply fan started making noise. So I brought the case to the dealer and they put a 300 watt power supply in it. As soon as they did that, my system would alternately give me a black screen when booting (nothing would happen although the power supply would run and you could hear the hard drives trying to initialize). Then eventuallly it booted and locked up. So the dealer put the old PS with a new fan in it back in my system. My hard drives were scrambled at that point so I had to reformat them. After that the system worked fine. I was back to using my old PS with a new fan in it.

Fast forward 3 years later. I get this PS from someone's old case and put it in my case (the guy lost the mounting screws to the old case so I couldn't use the case itself, just the 300 watt power supply). I put the power supply in (I had to buy a power supply extender cable for the motherboard - the cable was too short). I then had the freaky things happening again. Lock ups and then a black screen and the system would not boot at all. I changed voltages to CPU default (don't from 1.95v to whatever default is) and it booted. Then I got the black screen and it wouldn't boot. I even unplugged the power cord, tried insert to CPU defaults. Nothing.

Then I put the old PS in and voila, the thing works. Totally strange.

 

[angrysquirrel]

oh...

I got a new ecs motherboard with an 1800+ CPU & heatsink/fan coming this week so that's why I wanted to upgrade my PS. Hopefully, the ECS board and CPU will work with the new 300w PS. If not, guess I'll bite the bullet and get a 350 or 400 watt from a retail store.

 

[LutaWicasa]

Actually, it sounds like the cable extention isn't shooting yer power cleanly. Maybe bad connector?