Is my new Seasonic PSU defective?...

oinka · Post by **oinka** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 5:05 pm

I just bought a Seasonic Super Silencer 460W power supply to replace the generic 350W one I've been using for the past year. My reason for replacing it was to reduce the noise.

I plugged in the new one, hit the switch, my subwoofer goes "bump" and the case fan twitches then nothing. Subsequent presses of the power button do nothing. If I unplug the PSU and flip the 1/0 switch a few times (recommended by seasonic to reset the protection circuits) then push the power button it will do the same thing - bump, twitch, nothing.

Hook up my old PSU again, everything's fine, works perfectly.

So I opened an RMA with the manufacturer only to find out they will only pay half the shipping. Called the vendor, they will pay all of the shipping as long as they verify it is definitely defective.

Here's where it gets a little interesting...

If I unplug my graphics card (Radeon 9700PRO All-In-Wonder) from the PSU, the computer starts up and a little error message comes on the screen telling me I forgot to plug in the power for the video card (for those not familiar with the 9700 video card, it takes a regular floppy connector to supply additional power).

I started thinking "ok, the PSU has a defect that only shows itself with high powered components attached"... and I decided to test that theory by plugging in all the devices I could find... two CDroms, 2 serial ATA hard drives, 4 regular ATA hard drives. System boots fine with all of those attached (as long as the graphics card remains un-attached).

I'm not sure if those extra devices are enough to equal the power consumption of the 9700 though... my guess is not... anyone know for sure?

so is the PSU defective or does it just have some incompatibility with my graphics card?

is the graphics card defective and the old PSU doesn't have a problem with it but the (more sophisticated) protection circuits in the new PSU do?

and how come batman doesn't dance anymore?

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 5:20 pm

Well, that bump doesn't really mean anything. Computers generally do that upon start with some sort of audio *pop*, and with your sub, it turns into a low frequency pop, aka, "bump".

Make sure you have everything connected correctly. I'm sorry I can't be of much help - the whole "plugging everything i can find in makes it work" is really an interesting situation.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 6:30 pm

What else are you running? It's possible that you're overloading the 5V line on the power supply (if you have multiple hard drives, and an older processor, especially AMD). The power distribution between rails has changed considerably in the past few years. See the relevant part of the newly updated PSU FAQ.

Other possibilities include a defective floppy connector, or a poor distribution of power across the various voltage rails. Please post with more system info.

oinka · Post by **oinka** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 7:00 pm

Devonavar wrote:What else are you running? It's possible that you're overloading the 5V line on the power supply (if you have multiple hard drives, and an older processor, especially AMD). The power distribution between rails has changed considerably in the past few years. See the relevant part of the newly updated PSU FAQ.

Other possibilities include a defective floppy connector, or a poor distribution of power across the various voltage rails. Please post with more system info.

here's the dirt on my system:

MSI PT880 Neo LSR motherboard
P4 2.8C (Northwood Socket478, 200 MHz FSB) cpu
2x512MB noname 200MHz dual channel ram
ATI Radeon 9700PRO All-In-Wonder (AGP 8x) with an arctic cooling VGA silencer rev.3 (great VGA cooler by the way)
2x80GB Maxtor 7200RPM sATA drives in raid0
LG 52x32x52x and 16x DVD combo drive
Chenbro Xpider case (the noname 350W psu I mentioned came with the case)
Antec Smartcool 120mm case fan (never buy this - it's trash)
stock intel CPU cooler

The PSU has two floppy connectors - both produce the same result. I even tried an adapter that converts the big molex (like for hard drives) into a floppy size power connector - same result.

I've tried disconnecting everything but the power to the mobo, processor and video card - same result. This would indicate that my hard drives and other devices have nothing to do with this problem.

I've browsed the PSU faq... unfortunately I'm unable to find data about how much power the card draws from which rails... so I can't determine if my setup is overloading one of them. However, here's a comparison of the specs from my noname 350W and the Seasonic 460W.

Noname 350:
+3.3V 28A +5V 30A +12V 15A -5V 0.3A -12V 0.8A +5Vs 2A

Seasonic Super Silencer 460:
+3.3V 28A +5V 30A +12V 25A -5V n/a. -12V 0.8A +5Vs 2A

so it stands to reason that if the noname one could handle it, the seasonic should also be able to.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 8:49 pm

Your card draws 24W at idle, and 54W under load. I would agree that it's not just a straight capacity problem ... but it might have to do with the relative load between the 5V and 12V lines. You've been pretty thorough with your testing, I don't have much to add.

My suggestion now (if you haven't given up completely) is to find out which ATX12V standard each one conforms to and see if there are any relevant differences. This may be quite a substantial bit of research, and it's not clear that you'll get anything out of it. Your best bet might just be to RMA it.

You can also compare the combined maximum wattage for the 3.3V and 5V lines (180W for the SS), but I doubt this is relevant. You've already proved that the SS can handle spinups for 6 HDDs, and that should draw ~150 from the 5V and 12V lines.

It might also be worth double checking that the problem isn't in the Radeon itself. Plugging it into another system if you have one would resolve this.

oinka · Post by **oinka** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 10:40 pm

thanks very much for your advice... this is such a weird one that I feel like I have to get to the bottom of it (if at all possible). To that end, I plan on giving my graphics card and PSU to a friend to get him to test them in his system and see if that sheds any light. I emailed Seasonic and basically copy and pasted my post from this forum into the email. I can't wait to see what their opinion is =o)

(gee, do you think they'll blame it on their own component, or on someone else's???)

so anyways back to my real question: how come batman doesn't dance anymore?

Elixer · Post by **Elixer** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 10:51 pm

If you have another agp video card you might try seeing if your comp will boot with that. Then go into your bios and look at the voltage lines. If any of them are out of spec then you've found your problem. I seriously doubt you're overloading the seasonic, I mean, your system should draw less than 200W at full load, which is less than half of the capacity of the PS.

oinka · Post by **oinka** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 10:19 am

Elixer wrote:If you have another agp video card you might try seeing if your comp will boot with that. Then go into your bios and look at the voltage lines. If any of them are out of spec then you've found your problem. I seriously doubt you're overloading the seasonic, I mean, your system should draw less than 200W at full load, which is less than half of the capacity of the PS.

that's something I didn't think of... in my bios the AGP voltage is set to "auto", and in the MSI "corecenter" mobo monitor program it shows the AGP voltage as 1.9V (a little high, right?). I tried setting it to 1.5V (lowest setting in bios) 1.55V, 1.6V and manually to 1.9V but they all do the same thing.

unregistered · Post by **unregistered** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 5:36 pm

I had a similar problem with a Super tornado 300w. I put it in and no boot, post, nothing but fans. Put it in my other computer same thing.

They (SEASONIC) rma'd it for me. I paid the shipping and the next one worked fine, even though they sent me a note saying that they tested the "old" one and found nothing wrong with it. This was after I rma'd the rev.A2 that sounded like a helicopter flying over. Cost me a lot in shipping (twice) but it is OK now. I do hear a little coil whine though, still it is PDQ.

oinka · Post by **oinka** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 1:22 pm

unregistered wrote:I had a similar problem with a Super tornado 300w. I put it in and no boot, post, nothing but fans. Put it in my other computer same thing.

They (SEASONIC) rma'd it for me. I paid the shipping and the next one worked fine, even though they sent me a note saying that they tested the "old" one and found nothing wrong with it. This was after I rma'd the rev.A2 that sounded like a helicopter flying over. Cost me a lot in shipping (twice) but it is OK now. I do hear a little coil whine though, still it is PDQ.

thanks for the tip. It looks like that's what I'll end up doing. I gave the PSU to a friend to try in his computer. His is a p4 prescott with an intel mobo and radeon x700 PCIexpress video. It worked fine in his.

Seasonic replied to my email just saying "open an RMA". It really sucks that I will have to pay to ship it back but 5h1t happens as they say...

oinka · Post by **oinka** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 3:35 pm

I gave my graphics card to a friend to try in his system. I was pretty surprised when he told me that he had the same problem I did. So something's wrong with my graphics card. Near as I can tell it's some defect that my old power supply doesn't mind, but the new PSU and my friends PSU don't like it. Maybe a broken wire or something. I've looked the card over but didn't see any problem. Removed, cleaned and remounted the heatsink, tried it with the fan unplugged. Nothing helps. I guess I should continue my investigation in the graphics forum =o)

Thanks all.

bsoft · Post by **bsoft** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:07 pm

oinka wrote:I gave my graphics card to a friend to try in his system. I was pretty surprised when he told me that he had the same problem I did. So something's wrong with my graphics card. Near as I can tell it's some defect that my old power supply doesn't mind, but the new PSU and my friends PSU don't like it. Maybe a broken wire or something. I've looked the card over but didn't see any problem. Removed, cleaned and remounted the heatsink, tried it with the fan unplugged. Nothing helps. I guess I should continue my investigation in the graphics forum =o)

Thanks all.

You may have a short or partial-short accross the 12V connector on the card. Your old PSU may not have overcurrent protection, but the Seasonics shut off immediately if there is too much current flow.

Try measuring the resistance accross the power connector on the card. If it's something like "0.1 ohms", you've got a problem.

rtsai · Post by **rtsai** » Wed May 18, 2005 3:09 pm

Hey oinka--

How long did Seasonic take to get back to you (say, from receiving your RMA and sending a new one out)? Did they provide you with tracking information?

My SS-400 just died, and it finally arrived in California today. Now I have to wait for them to decide to send me a new one, and then for it to make its cross-country journey back to me, who will in the meantime have been without a PVR for two weeks

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Is my new Seasonic PSU defective?...

Is my new Seasonic PSU defective?...

System Specs...