Shut Down

[CoM_Solaufein]

Now I got my two 4890 graphic cards. Now when I play a game and after a few moments of playing the computer shuts down, waits a couple of seconds and reboots. Never had this problem until I installed those two cards. I have an Apevia 750 watt power supply, or so it claims. These cards require a 6 pin and 8 pin. It comes with an adapter in case you don't have an eight pin, which I don't which uses up two four pins. Now that is explained these cards in total use 4 four pin adapters and 2 six pins. I'm thinking its a power supply that can't handle it. Just about all of the other connections are being used for one thing or another like fans, DVD, etc. I just got done reading the reviews of this power supply and others have had problems with it.

 

Epic fail. First I get a faulty 5870, then I can't get another one because they are out of stock, get 4890's and they're power hogs.

[Humanoid]

Not impossible - indeed it could have been that the 5870 was glitching because of power issues? Don't see much to do besides test those cards one at a time to try to confirm the problem.

[CoM_Solaufein]

Uninstalled everything, shut down, took one card out and keeping it out, took the primary card out and installed it again, boot up and reinstalled the software. Works just fine with one card now. It could have been a power and heating issue at the same time. The geniuses that designed these Antec 900 cases stuck the power supply at the bottom of the case. So if you have two cards installed you have a card blowing hot air at the power supply and the power supply is blowing hot air at the secondary card.

 

I'll just use the one card in this machine and whenever I decide to get the next generation card I'll put it in this computer and put the 4890s in my other computer.

[Humanoid]

The fan on current model single-fan power supplies is an intake fan, the bottom PSU placement is designed to isolate the PSU completely from the heat dynamics of the rest of the system since traditional top-placement meant the PSU was taking air from increasingly hot CPUs and ramping up their own fan as they overheated.

 

Likewise, modern 'blower' video cards take air from inside the case and exhaust it outside to the back panel of the case. The problem with multi-card solutions in terms of heating tends to be the upper video card is starved of cool air since there's very little room between it and the card below, and the heat from the card below heats up the whatever intake the top card gets. This effect would be further amplified the worse the front intake airflow is (around the HDD cage area).

[TheHarlequin]

Sounds more like heat issue then power issue. Either the cards or/and your CPU was over heating.

Edited November 24, 2009 by TheHarlequin