Questions related to Silverstone ST60F

[mfawtn]

First of all thank you jonnyGURU for your website and all the reviews you are doing here! Since I managed to trash my old PSU and was in dire need of a new one I started searching the web on information about PSUs and what to look for and your reviews have certainly been of the greatest help. Based on your review and a bit of comparison between other PSUs I've bought the Silverstone ST60F today.

I apologize in advance if this is not the right place to post my problem but I'm completely out of ideas and I am sure someone here can help me out with what I need to know. I also apologize for a rather long post that is about to come.


My situation:

I have a AGP VGA card that requires external power through a 6pin connector that LOOKS like a PCI-E connector. It came with a Y-cable that turns 2 regular molex 4-pin into a 6-pin which has +12V on pins 1 and 3. Pins 4 through 6 are ground, pin 2 is empty.

The standard PCI-E connectors have +12V on pins 1 through 3 and ground on pins 4 through 6 so I am unsure whether it can be used to power my VGA card or not. Sadly the documentation that was included with my VGA card was extremely poor, one would even say to the point it was nonexistant :p. I am at quite a loss here.

Since I have to use 2 molex connectors to power the VGA card through the Y-cable I am using one of the molex cables with 2 connectors and no floppy connector that came with the ST60F to do the job. I use the two molex cables with 2 connectors and a floppy connector to power a DVD-writer, a CD-writer, a floppy drive, a front panel device and a whole bunch of fans which leaves 1 out of 4 molex connectors on the ST60F free. Apart from those I have 2 SATA HDDs connected to the ST60F and the main ATX connector using the 24-pin to 20-pin adapter to connect to my mainboard. For the sake of completeness, the CPU I'm using is a Athlon XP-M @2,2GHz.

The way I fried my old PSU is kinda embarrassing. . . when I got the VGA card with the supplied Y-cable I actually only connected 1 of the molex connectors from the PSU to it. Strangely enough the system ran fine for at least 30 or so minutes till the PSU shut down on me and would not power up ever since.


My problem:

As mentioned above I have to use the Y-cable to power my VGA card. I managed to boot into windows once before the system reset itself and shut down during boot shortly after that. Now upon power on. . . the systems fails to boot. It does not even show the VGA card's BIOS, usually the first thing you see when you power on a system. From fans blowing, DVD/CD-writers spinning to HDDs making their power up noises everything seems to be working. . . apart from the fact that the screen stays dead and the system doesn't seem to be making any attempts to boot up.

When I remove the Y-cable, leaving the VGA card with no external power supply, I get a warning message from the VGA card notifying me of the lacking external power supply immediately after power on. Yet when I use the supplied Y-cable everything stays "dead"! :confused:

Given the fact how I toasted the previous PSU I'm a bit worried about having damaged my other computer components through the improper usage of the external power supply required by the VGA card.


My questions:

1: Is it possible that the old PSU damaged the Mainboard or CPU or any other component for that matter by way of improper power supply connection to the VGA card?

2: I've noticed how the ST60F came with 2 PCI-E cables specifically designed to be used with the 4-pin molex connector of the PSU (+12V4 rail) but I have no idea on how to connect them since they are not mentioned anywhere in the documentation that came with the ST60F. I am not entirely sure if I can use any PCI-E power connector to connect to the 6-pin socket on my VGA card at all since the pin configuration on the Y-cable that came with the card differs slightly (only +12V on pin 1 and 3, nothing on pin 2 as opposed to +12V on pin 1, 2 and 3 on ST60F's PCI-E cable).

Again I apologize for this overly long post but I'm really hoping to find an answer or two here.

Thanks in advance,

Michael

[jonnyGURU]

My questions:

1: Is it possible that the old PSU damaged the Mainboard or CPU or any other component for that matter by way of improper power supply connection to the VGA card?

Yes. But not front an "improper connection." If you only connected one Molex, that only means you have less amperage available to that card. If that were a problem, the card would've told you that there wasn't enough juice available for the card or you would suffer performance.



2: I've noticed how the ST60F came with 2 PCI-E cables specifically designed to be used with the 4-pin molex connector of the PSU (+12V4 rail) but I have no idea on how to connect them since they are not mentioned anywhere in the documentation that came with the ST60F. I am not entirely sure if I can use any PCI-E power connector to connect to the 6-pin socket on my VGA card at all since the pin configuration on the Y-cable that came with the card differs slightly (only +12V on pin 1 and 3, nothing on pin 2 as opposed to +12V on pin 1, 2 and 3 on ST60F's PCI-E cable).

The connector is still a PCI-e, even though it only used two 12V connections on the adapter. They use two 12V connections because two Molexes only provide two 12V leads. Where would the third come from?!? But you could still use a regular 6-pin PCI-e.[/quote]

Don't use the adapter.

[mfawtn]

Yes. But not front an "improper connection." If you only connected one Molex, that only means you have less amperage available to that card. If that were a problem, the card would've told you that there wasn't enough juice available for the card or you would suffer performance.

So the other devices should all be intact right? Cause that's really the only mistake I did.

The connector is still a PCI-e, even though it only used two 12V connections on the adapter. They use two 12V connections because two Molexes only provide two 12V leads. Where would the third come from?!? But you could still use a regular 6-pin PCI-e.

Don't use the adapter.

I'm using the PCI-E cable/connector that came with the ST60F now and there seems to be nothing wrong with the VGA card.

I've managed to start my system but as soon as it reaches the point where you see the windows xp boot screen the system shuts down into a semi-off state; semi-off because the fans are still running although at a reduces speed. At that point I just turn off the power manually because I do not want to risk further damage. Since I have no other S-ATA HDDs at to check if they are damaged I've tried booting with a regular IDE HDD. As far as you can compare starting the windows xp installation setup I can only say that the IDE HDD is working.

I gave the S-ATA HDDs a few more tries in hope that it was just a random error but I seem to have really done it now because the BIOS locks up after it detects how much RAM I have installed.:wall:

I can live with the RAM possibly being destroyed. . . but if the HDDs are dead I'm really going to be frustrated (nothing work related but still a major pain in the ass if I may say so).

[Oklahoma Wolf]

the CPU I'm using is a Athlon XP-M @2,2GHz.

Does the motherboard have an ATX 12v connector? If not, it's possible the PSU doesn't like the 3.3v/5v load on it.

[mfawtn]

Does the motherboard have an ATX 12v connector? If not, it's possible the PSU doesn't like the 3.3v/5v load on it.

The motherboard only uses the 20-pin ATX connector. As for the +3.3V and +5V rails, they should hardly be under any stress after a quick calculation.

[jonnyGURU]

The motherboard only uses the 20-pin ATX connector. As for the +3.3V and +5V rails, they should hardly be under any stress after a quick calculation.

Quick calculation of what? From what resource?

If the motherboard doesn't have a 4-pin connector, the CPU's Vcore isn't regulated from the 12V rail like any modern system. It's regulated from the 5V rail. That's the point OKW is trying to make.

60W @ 12V is only 5A.

But 60W @ 5V is 12A!

[GalvanizedYankee]

Post your motherboard brand & model please.

[mfawtn]

Hmm I was basing my assumptions on this AMD guide (http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/26003.pdf) (admittedly quite outdated) and that the default 20-pin ATX connector has a pin for +12V3.

The motherboard is an ASRock K7NF2-RAID and the manual can be downloaded here (http://download.asrock.com/manual/K7NF2-RAID.pdf).

[GalvanizedYankee]

With that board, the CPU is fed from the 5V rail.
The ST60F has 5V@24A=120W. So that is cutting it pretty close, considering that HDDs and opticals also draw from the 5V.
OK Wolf asked about the 4 pin ATX connection on the board. Your board has none. If it did, the CPU would be fed from the 12V rail.


I did looked at the manual and Googled images of your board.

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Now that we know the board is 5v based and the 60F is being crossloaded, my suggestion would be to swap the 60F for the ST56ZF if you can... it can handle a good size 5v load without crossloading itself to heck. Had mine running a 5v oriented nForce2 IGP board with an all in wonder X800XL for a long time - the 56ZF didn't bat an eye at it.

[mfawtn]

Since I couldn't get anything else over the weekend I decided to try this 350W PSU from Fortron/Source, FSP Group Inc. that I had at the office.

Model No: FSP350-60PN (PF)
+3.3V@28A
+5V@30A
+12V@18A
+5Vsb@2A
-5V@0.3A
-12V@0.8A
(+3.3V & +5V = 220W Max)

is what the sticker reads.

From what I could tell after "playing around" with the system over the weekend everything seems to be working, the only problems I had were a few corrupted files on my hard drives.

I'm literally using every connector there is on this PSU (5x 4-pin molex, 2x floppy, 1x SATA) except for the 4-pin 12V CPU connector and the 6-pin "flat" auxilliary connector.

One of my SATA HDDs is connected through the SATA power cable that comes out of the PSU, the 2nd HDD has to use a molex to SATA converter.
The 2x floppy connectors are occupied by a floppy drive and a front panel drive.
2x 4-pin molex are used for the VGA card. I've read that I should use 2x 4-pin molex that are not running on the same cable.
From http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html : If your power supply doesn't have a PCI-Express cable then you can use the adapter shown above on the right to convert two 4 pin peripheral cable (http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html#peripheral) into one. If you use one of those then be sure to plug the 4 pin peripheral connectors into separate cables coming from the power supply. If you plug them both into the same power supply cable then you are drawing all the power of the PCI-Express connector through a single 18 guage wire. You can usually get away with that but there's no reason to do it.The last 2x 4-pin molex are connected to the DVD-writer, CD-writer and the case fans.

I've noticed the +12V rail running between +11.67V and +11.8V (forgot the +3.3V and +5V values. . . but out of the top of my head they were something like +3.3xV and +5.xV).


Is there anything I should be looking out for while I'm using this PSU or should I just go to the safe side and get the ST56ZF as Oklahoma_Wolf suggested?

Thanks to everyone's help here I got the system running again after a week of worries. Hopefully I can learn even more from you guys here.

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Are those readings from a multimeter? That PSU should be doing ok unless you're trying to power an X1900 with it (and they don't have those in AGP... not yet anyway).

[mfawtn]

Those are readings from Motherboard Monitor Utility and from the Hardware Monitoring Screen in the BIOS.

[Oklahoma Wolf]

You'll need a meter to be sure the PSU is doing ok, but my thinking is if your power related issues go away now the FSP is probably handling things fine.

[mfawtn]

The only problem I'm having with this PSU now is the cold start. Need to leave the computer sitting in BIOS for 5-10 mins before I can actually use it. If I remember correctly that's because PSUs have low output at cold start? Can't remember which review I read about it.

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Need to leave the computer sitting in BIOS for 5-10 mins before I can actually use it. If I remember correctly that's because PSUs have low output at cold start?

Shouldn't be a problem... if you have access to a meter I'd check the rails accurately to see if the FSP is behaving itself. It could be that the 350W is running at its limits.