System won't [boot] with 80w pico

StartledPancake · Post by **StartledPancake** » Sat Jan 23, 2010 4:36 pm

Guys,

Ive upgraded the motherboard and cpu in one of my PC's and now Im having an issue with it not booting with the 120w pico + 80W brick. The fans and drives spin up but the system wont post.

If I swap it for a generic 120w psu it works perfectly. The total load power consumption is less than 60w even with the rubbishy generic PSU so I dont think its overloaded, but I guess thats a possiblility. The specs:

MB Gigabyte GA33M-2SL
CPU Celeron 3200 @ 2.3 Ghz & 1.1v
1x 3.5 SATA
2X 2.5" SATA

Any help is much appreciated, that generic PSU sounds like its powered off rocket fuel.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Sat Jan 23, 2010 4:52 pm

does it boot with only one drive? spin up spike for all three together might be too much.

stevea · Post by **stevea** » Mon Jan 25, 2010 7:10 am

Your average power consumption may always be under 60W but momentary demands are likely to exceed that number and cause excessive voltage drop which is extremely likely to cause the processor/memory to go to an incorrect state.

If the system can boot with one disk only, then there is likely a solution - stagger the disk powerup. Server systems use this regularly.

On Linux the command ....
hdparm -s /dev/sdb
(substitute your second drive for /dev/sdb) can cause the drive to permanently power up into standby mode and is only enabled by the OS. The OS and the drive firmware have to support this feature.

Some SATA drives have a separate jumper or use pin11 of the sata power connector for this.

No clue if/how any Windoze supports staggered drive power-up.

Placing a modest sized electrolytic cap on the 5v mains might help but you risk overloading the PS at turn-on or the voltage may ramp too slowly for power-on-reset.

StartledPancake · Post by **StartledPancake** » Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:10 pm

Thanks for the suggestions but no luck so far. Ive removed all the power connectors to the drives and with an undervolted e3200 it should be pulling aroung <30 watts so it cant be load related.

Is it possible the motherboard wont post without a 4pin 12v ATX connector attached? It doesn seem to matter on the ION board.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Tue Jan 26, 2010 4:08 pm

StartledPancake wrote:
Is it possible the motherboard wont post without a 4pin 12v ATX connector attached? It doesn seem to matter on the ION board.

winner winner chicken dinner!

does the ion board support IntelÂ® Coreâ„¢ 2 multi-cores?

StartledPancake · Post by **StartledPancake** » Wed Jan 27, 2010 1:00 am

xan_user wrote:
StartledPancake wrote:
Is it possible the motherboard wont post without a 4pin 12v ATX connector attached? It doesn seem to matter on the ION board.
winner winner chicken dinner!

does the ion board support IntelÂ® Coreâ„¢ 2 multi-cores?

The ION chipset is only for atom cpu's so, err, no.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Wed Jan 27, 2010 6:46 am

StartledPancake wrote:
xan_user wrote:
StartledPancake wrote:
Is it possible the motherboard wont post without a 4pin 12v ATX connector attached? It doesn seem to matter on the ION board.
winner winner chicken dinner!

does the ion board support IntelÂ® Coreâ„¢ 2 multi-cores?
The ION chipset is only for atom cpu's so, err, no.

exactly, to be able to power big chips, the GA33M-2SL needs the 4pin 12v to run the socket. (even if you are only using a celron)