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#1
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Power Supply Problem
This is my first-time building a system.
Antec SLK1650 retail case with 350 watt power supply. Here is a list of everything plugged into the motherboard: Shuttle AN35N-Ultra motherboard Athlon AMD XP 2500 1.83 Ghz CPU 1 GB RAM ATI Radeon 9600 AGP video card 2 hard disk drives (1 Maxtor & 1 Western Digital) Memorex 48MAXX 148AJ CD-RW drive. HP DVD300I DVD+RW drive 3 cooling fans (front/side/rear). Running Windows XP Professional. I was getting "SCSI Command Aborted" and "Power Calibration Error" messages in Nero when trying to burn DVD or CD on one of my two drives. Built-in XP burning software reported errors as well. Someone suggested that my power supply wasn't robust enough and that I should unplug a peripheral. Sure enough, if I unplug my CD-RW I can get the DVD+R to burn just fine. Plug the CD-RW back in and wham! the problem returns like clockwork. My setup is very basic, and I find it really hard to believe that I am pushing or exceeding the limits of a 350-watt power supply. Not to mention, I was getting the burning error messges when I had only one cooling fan running (before installation of the two auxilary fans). Another possibly-related problem is this: if I try to connect one or both of my two auxilary fans directly to the motherboard with those 3-pin connectors, I cannot get power to the motherboard. I hit the switch and the power comes on and quickly shuts down. If, however, I connect the fan to a 4-pin connector directly to the power supply and NOT to the motherboard itself, the fans work fine and I can get power to the motherboard. Please advise. Is my power supply inherently the issue or am I maybe dealing with a defective one? Is it something else entirely? |
#2
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SmarSquid wrote:
if I unplug my CD-RW I can get the DVD+R to burn just fine. Plug the CD-RW back in and wham! the problem returns like clockwork. And can we assume that the CD-RW motor was not running during failure? Does the CD-RW housing feel hot? I can't believe that the CD-RW circuit board would use much power. My setup is very basic, and I find it really hard to believe that I am pushing or exceeding the limits of a 350-watt power supply. I tend to agree. I believe your graphics card doesn't have a fan, so I guess it doesn't use much power. I would guess you have a good 50W to spare. It would be good to add up the power specs of your components to be sure. Try something like this: http://takaman.jp/D/?english Also amd.com has some literature on calculating power requirements. Do you have the IDE jumpers set correctly on your optical drives? |
#3
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Actually, my video card does run its own fan. Also, I forgot to mention that
I have a Promise PCI IDE controller installed. Connected to it are one of my 2 hard drives (the other hard drive is connected to the primary onboard IDE channel) and the CD-RW. The CD-RW is set as master of channel 2 on the PCI controller. My DVD+RW is connected as master on the secondary onboard IDE channel. Did you give any consideration to what I said in my original post about the PC not powering up if I connect the 2 auxilary fans directly to the motherboard (instead I have to connect the extra fans to the 4-pin connectors directly to the power supply). A couple of other things, too - the power supply has a 4-pin connection that matches a 12v female port on the motherboard. Currently it is not connected; I'm not sure what it does. Also, from the power supply is a black and blue wired pair that goes to a 3-pin connector of some sort. Don't know what this is supposed to be for either. "Matt" wrote in message ... SmarSquid wrote: if I unplug my CD-RW I can get the DVD+R to burn just fine. Plug the CD-RW back in and wham! the problem returns like clockwork. And can we assume that the CD-RW motor was not running during failure? Does the CD-RW housing feel hot? I can't believe that the CD-RW circuit board would use much power. My setup is very basic, and I find it really hard to believe that I am pushing or exceeding the limits of a 350-watt power supply. I tend to agree. I believe your graphics card doesn't have a fan, so I guess it doesn't use much power. I would guess you have a good 50W to spare. It would be good to add up the power specs of your components to be sure. Try something like this: http://takaman.jp/D/?english Also amd.com has some literature on calculating power requirements. Do you have the IDE jumpers set correctly on your optical drives? |
#4
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SmarSquid wrote:
Actually, my video card does run its own fan. Okay, well anyway I've seen a couple models of ATI 9600 that don't have fans, which means the graphics chip doesn't use a lot of power. the power supply has a 4-pin connection that matches a 12v female port on the motherboard. Currently it is not connected; I'm not sure what it does. That is probably the source of at least one of your problems. That should be connected. See the ATX12V spec or so at www.formfactors.org |
#5
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SmarSquid wrote:
Also, from the power supply is a black and blue wired pair that goes to a 3-pin connector of some sort. Don't know what this is supposed to be for either. I believe that is for using the motherboard to control the fan speed of the power supply. Look in your mobo manual for a "system fan header" or so. Find the specs and manual for your PS at www.antec.com. If you have fans besides the one(s) included in the case purchase, I doubt that you will need them. |
#6
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Well, I plugged in the secondary 4-pin 12v connector from the power supply
to the motherboard, and moved the CD-RW from slave on the secondary onboard IDE channel to master on the secondary IDE channel on the PCI controller card. I can now connect my two extra fans directly to the motherboard with no problems, and the CD-RW and DVD+RW drives seem to be performing without the SCSI Command Aborted or Power Calibration Error messages from Nero. Howver, my DVD+RW is giving me attitude with my CD-RW disks. Nero will report the CD-RW as a blank rewriteable disk before I burn. After I burn a test CD-RW disk with the DVD+RW drive and then go to erase it, Nero and the DVD+RW drive reports the disk as being "CD read only" and therefore not erasable. The CD-RW drive will erase the disk just fine. I'm not sure, then, if this is still a power issue. I guess I will unplug a few things and see if that changes the behavior of Nero and my DVD+RW when trying to erase CD-RW disks. true, I can avoid the problem by using the DVD drive for writing to DVD only, but I'd prefer to have the flexibility. "Matt" wrote in message news SmarSquid wrote: Also, from the power supply is a black and blue wired pair that goes to a 3-pin connector of some sort. Don't know what this is supposed to be for either. I believe that is for using the motherboard to control the fan speed of the power supply. Look in your mobo manual for a "system fan header" or so. Find the specs and manual for your PS at www.antec.com. If you have fans besides the one(s) included in the case purchase, I doubt that you will need them. |
#7
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Howver, my DVD+RW is giving me attitude with my CD-RW disks. Nero will
report the CD-RW as a blank rewriteable disk before I burn. After I burn a test CD-RW disk with the DVD+RW drive and then go to erase it, Nero and the DVD+RW drive reports the disk as being "CD read only" and therefore not erasable. The CD-RW drive will erase the disk just fine. I'm not sure, then, if this is still a power issue. I guess I will unplug a few things and see if that changes the behavior of Nero and my DVD+RW when trying to erase CD-RW disks. true, I can avoid the problem by using the DVD drive for writing to DVD only, but I'd prefer to have the flexibility. It's your brand of media. Switch to a different brand. Try several until you find a brand that is compatible with your DVD burner. -Dave |
#8
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SmarSquid wrote:
moved the CD-RW from slave on the secondary onboard IDE channel to master on the secondary IDE channel on the PCI controller card. Not clear why you are using an add-on IDE controller. |
#9
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I've been conditioned to believe that I can get better paging file
performance by placing it on a hard drive connected to a separate controller from the system hard disk. That's why I put it in my system. Plus, the card was a carryover from my old system, which had no onboard ATA133 support. I stuck the CD-RW on that IDE controller just to see if it helped produce different outcomes regarding the burning errors. The controller card may not help at all in reality, but I don't think it's detrimental anyway. "Matt" wrote in message ... SmarSquid wrote: moved the CD-RW from slave on the secondary onboard IDE channel to master on the secondary IDE channel on the PCI controller card. Not clear why you are using an add-on IDE controller. |
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