Geez how much power does this system need or is a buggerd power supply.

[The PIT]

Details of the system in the sig just change the 9700 to the 9800 and the Audigy to the Audigy 2.

I've noticed that when the graphics card is busy one of the hard drives will click and sometimes the hard drive light will stay. After checking all the connections and reseating them, one was loose it still was the same. I disconnected one hard drive and bingo no clicking anymore.
The power supply is either a 430watt Enermax or a 550 watt Enermax. I've got two computers and I can't remember which one is in which. Doh.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

congrats on your new purchase Pit! Maybe its time for you to upgrade that motherboard SOON(TM) (P4C800 baby!)

anyways... i had that problem before. It was a loose connector. Had a weird problem on an old A7A266 (and my friend's)... sometimes after restarting the computer, it won't go past POST because it couldn't detect any disk. When this happens, the HDD LED was constantly on also. Shut it down, turn and back on, its working. we came to the conclusion that ALi sucks and its the motherboard's crappiness. Another similar case where the PSU was half dead and the 5V+ rail dropped to 4.4V Bad luck I had... lol

I dunno how I can help you. One thing that comes to my mind is make sure you are not overloading the PSU. (Seems like lack of power from the sound of it)

Anybody up for an Enermax 600W?

[The PIT]

The motherboard is on order.
Had the loose connector problem in the past and these aren't as good as I would wish. I reseated them all firmly like I said and then just pulled my linux drive out. Luckily I hadn't installed Lilo or I wouldn't be able too boot.

[rugger]

The PIT,

Try a standard 300W or 350W power supply. Enermax power supplies have occasionally been weird.

[The PIT]

Definatley the power supply and not an iffy hard drive. Borrowed a drive from work and soon as that was in clickety click on loading any 3d game.
Dunno about a cheapo one as I would have to probably upgrade it in the future anyway.
So I'm looking at an Antec true power 550w model. Bugger is my new motherboard arrived today and theres no point putting that in at the moment.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought Enermax and Antec are maunfecteurered at the same place. LOL.

So is Topower... but IMO my Topower is a lot better than my Enermax!

[The PIT]

I don't think they're the same. Either way I've got a problem with 9800 drawing to much current by the looks of things. So I'm definatly going to need a new one. The one I've got thats causing problems is the 550watt Model. Looking at the specs this can deliver a higher current than the Antec.

[rylan]

I assume you have the vid card power connector going to a dedicated line on the power supply? By that I mean not chaining stuff with the extension connector like your HD onto the same cable as the video card.
Btw I've got an Emermax 431W supply in a test system at work, and its got a 9700pro on it with a bunch of other power sucking hard drives and fans and it works fine. Are you able to check the voltage on the 5v and 12v lines when the clicking thing happens?

[Paddy]

Ive got a 500W Enermax with no problems

*edit*

To qualify my post more:

I have 3 IDE devices and 4SCSI devices in plus what ever h/w is listed in my sig

[Kurt]

Fortron Source are the best. They're not cheap, but then they don't cost (much) more than the Enermax. If you can't find the brand, all Aopen cases named Hxxx have them inside. Incidentally, the Aopen PSU you can buy retail are also FSP models -some are not but they're not called FSP-xxx.

Antec and Enlight (HTC) are good too. The HTC/Enlight ones had some problems with failing fans in the past, but otherwise they're pretty OK. Antec is slightly overrated though, IMO.

As a sidenote, I used to run a 4 drive IDE RAID array with 7200rpm drives in combination with a couple SCSI optical drives and an overclocked PIII-700 @933MHz with a GF2 GTS Ultra on a 250W FSP-250GV PSU (Aopen HX-45A case). No problems whatsoever for the year and a half I used the system. There were other cards such as a NIC, SB Live inside, modem, etc.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Originally posted by Paddy
Ive got a 500W Enermax with no problems

*edit*

To qualify my post more:

I have 3 IDE devices and 4SCSI devices in plus what ever h/w is listed in my sig

Do you mind giving one o me?

[The PIT]

It's very likely that the 9800 is sharing a hardrive cable. I've got them all cable tied so it's a bit of bugger finding which cable goes where. However with six case case fans, four hard drives two CD Writers, Floppy and Audigy2 eX it's going to have to share it's power with something.
No problems since disconnecting one of the hard drives though.

[WyWyWyWy]

AFAIK the 18 gauge psu wire can carry more than 10A at 12V... the 9800 can't draw that much power, can it?

I always liked the Enermax PSUs (though I do not own one) because their PSUs deliver more at 12V rail... which is always good for P4. IIRC the 430W model has 26A at 12V rail.

Compare to the Antec ones, you get only 18A...

[The PIT]

The 9800 I believe shouldn't.

I went and sent the hard drives defragging and watched it the voltages with Asus probe (Not very accurate I know) and they hardly twitched. So it looks like if you load the supply to a certain point the Enermax throws a wobbly.

[The PIT]

Okay I'm now running UT 2003, defrag, Power DVD and the voltages are not dipping. Go and figure. Other drive still out of the system by the way.