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fantasiatls 2005-05-03 12:41
This is really a two part question.
What is the recommended Power Supply when using 4 flatpanels and then 8 flatpanels?
This was never the intent when I first bought the tower, this was a later idea he wanted to do so here are the specs:
Have WinXP, used 2 Diamond Stealth 128 mb PCI and a Radeon 9250 128mb AGP.
My friend just called to tell me that the computer monitors all turn black and the computer shuts down. If he reboots he is fine. Is this power supply?
He is a Day Trader not a gamer no heavy graphics being used.
The second part to my question is on another system I am building I was going to install 2 Matrox Quad g200 cards on a WinXP 3.0ghz 512mb ram and then I looked at this power supply and it is only 300 watt max output.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Fantasiatls
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Tantalus 2005-05-04 00:52
This is really a two part question.
What is the recommended Power Supply when using 4 flatpanels and then 8 flatpanels?
This was never the intent when I first bought the tower, this was a later idea he wanted to do so here are the specs:
>>What is the recommended Power Supply when using 4 flatpanels and then 8 flatpanels?
the power supply question is a popular one on many tech forums when people are configuring their systems. for multi-display configs what power supply to use is largely dependent on the cpu type and the type of card(s) you are running. for a pentium 4 (or amd equivalent) a *good* quality 350w PS will be sufficient to power a 'standard' system (ie. 1 cdr/dvd drive, 2 hard drives, 1 or 2 case fans) pair to a low to mid-range video card (radeon 9xxx or nvidia fx4/5 series).
a common mistake is that people look solely at power output and overlook the more important spec which is the max amperage on the power rails. suggested ranges should be within - 3.3v @25A, 5v @35A, 12v @18A. if you're running one the of the intel L775 cpus or s478 EE chips, they are power hogs and you should probably buy a 400W or higher unit (max amperages remain approx the same as before)
>>Have WinXP, used 2 Diamond Stealth 128 mb PCI and a Radeon 9250 128mb AGP. My friend just called to tell me that the computer monitors all turn black and the computer shuts down. If he reboots he is fine. Is this power supply?
not enough info about the rest of the system to tell. a good 400w PS should do the trick...avoid using those 'packaged' generic ps that come with many cheap cases. your friend's problem could be the power settings. when he reboots, how long does it take before the system has the same problem?
>>The second part to my question is on another system I am building I was going to install 2 Matrox Quad g200 cards on a WinXP 3.0ghz 512mb ram and then I looked at this power supply and it is only 300 watt max output.
a 300w probably won't be enough to give you stable power.
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fantasiatls 2005-05-04 12:36
Hi Tantalus,
You are wonderful... thank you VERY much for the input. Like I said the first system was never intended for daytrading so I know it is a 2.0 processor and I upgraded to 512mb ram at the time I put it together. Now with this second system, I honestly never gave thought to the power supply, always checked out the processor and can build the ram so .. I will definetly install better power supplies on both towers.
Here is an update tho on the tower shutting down...
WinXP PRO service pack 2 all and current updates
Tower was fine when first put together, tower was fine after installing the video cards and monitors. This just started happening. He would leave the computer on over night get up in the morning and discover the shut down. He would reboot and get the message about recovering from a serious shutdown error. Now it is shutting down intermittently while in various programs like word or even internet surfing, noone has really been keeping track of the up time before it shuts down. So I made sure hibernation was off and power saver was off and only screen saver was on. Tried to access Device Manager and thats when I got A serious error has occured in Microsoft Mgmt Console send or don't send report and then it takes me back to the system panel. This is in the admin and in safe mode.
I am sorry so lengthy and when I reiterated the same information.
Your time and patience is GREATLY appreciated.
Fantasiatls
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fantasiatls 2005-05-04 14:36
Hi Tantalus
I just spoke to my friend, I had him search for the devmgmt.msc and it was found in his system32 folder. He has not had the problem of the monitors shutting down so far. I had him go to Manage and he got a fatal error when he did that.
All I did today was take the Monitors off power management and set it to never and then I plugged all the monitors on one power strip and the computer into another power strip with the backup power supply.
Why can't I get to device manager? Power supply?
Fantasiatls
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Tantalus 2005-05-05 03:04
nope, power supply instability would not explain the errors and problems you're describing within windows trying to launch stuff.
from all that you've posted, it sounds like there is something corrupted within windows which is causing the crashes/freezing. and these are probably the most difficult of all problems to troubleshoot.
some guidelines that might help:
1) look at the three event logs, ie run Eventvwr.msc
2) did you friend install any programs or updates prior to the time all the instabilty occured? even something as 'innocuous' as the ms windows update can throw a machine out of whack.
under the Startup & Recovery options, deselect 'automatically restart' and make sure "write a sys log event.." is enabled. this may help in identifying what is causing the machine in crash.
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