Nvidia driver failures.

[Tigger29]

One thing to keep in mind is that the 'bargain bin' power supplies tend to fudge their wattage numbers a bit.  Sure it's capable of putting out 450 watts, but only for short periods of time.

The 'better quality', more expensive reliable brands tend to advertise what their supplies can consistently output.  Those 450 watt power supplies might actually max out at 525, but can safely output 450 all day long (for example).

With that being said, the price difference between a 700watt and a 500watt power supply (for a quality brand) isn't that much different in the whole scheme of things, so personally I would probably have picked a 700, even if the calculators said I only needed 412. (Also for future expansion, USB, track-IR, etc... purposes).

And then there's the 12v rail amperage thing, but you'll find that most 'better' supplies will be fine for that sort of thing, just check and make sure.

[Chalenge]

Of course something else to bear in mind is your UPS which may be adequate for your current PSU but not so hot for anything bigger. Just check things out closely and make sure you wont tax (forgive me using that word at this time of year) your batteries too much. You DO want a UPS to protect your investment and you DO want a 80 Plus Gold certified PSU so it provides clean and adequate juice to all your devices. Everything down the chain lives longer happier lives that way. 

[Skuzzy]

Switching power supplies will output clean power up to around 80% of thier rated capacity.  After that, they start putting out 'dirty' power.  A 450W power supply will do fine up to a 360W load.  After that, all bets are off.

Of course, that also assumes the power supply is properly rated.  Budget power supplies are rarely rated properly.

[Chalenge]

Now see I thought that 80 rating was because when the PSU delivers 86W (hypothetical wattage but the actual test result of the Seasonic X750 Gold) it is using 100W. In the case of 80 Silver the PSU is closer to 80 than that and in the case of 80 Bronze it might even be slightly below 80? Anyway when I went to buy the Seasonic was the only unit that I saw that had the gold rating and none of the PC Power & Cooling PSUs (available) were even rated!

Buyer beware I guess... so be sure to check out the reviews on sites like pcstats.com and avoid buying a boat anchor (I have a few).

[saggs]

You guys are great.  

I posted this issue on a tech support forum a while back, and nobody there even mentioned it could be the PSU.  They just threw a bunch of stuff at me about event logs, and HDD diagnosis and a whole lotta stuff that went way over my head, and I got confused and gave up.  Ya'll  here are much more idiot friendly.

I posted over in Hardware and software about helping me pick a PSU, if you have any feedback there I appreciate it.

[Krusty]

We have a lot more idiots! Myself included

We try to help, folks learn, then when they can they pass it on to the next guy. It's a "not-so-vicious-cycle" we got going here

[MutleyBR]

You guys are great.  

I posted this issue on a tech support forum a while back, and nobody there even mentioned it could be the PSU.  They just threw a bunch of stuff at me about event logs, and HDD diagnosis and a whole lotta stuff that went way over my head, and I got confused and gave up.  Ya'll  here are much more idiot friendly.

I posted over in Hardware and software about helping me pick a PSU, if you have any feedback there I appreciate it.

Although I didnīt post here, a  to you Sir. and to all who came to help.

Many guys ask for help here, someone else suggests a solution and the first guy doesn't answer...

It's good to know the results, did it work? Was an alternate solution applied?

All of us profit from the feddback.

Good luck!

Mutley

[Chalenge]

I should point out that while I posted specifically about pcstats.com it is by no means my primary site. Unfortunately my favorite site which is hardwaresecrets.com can be hard to get to (my browsers sometimes cannot access it for some reason) and a lot of the older reviews have missing pages or images. I dont think pcstats.com does testing with enough depth but it and other sites will often have images that include details Im trying to see.

I like to see reviews that have complete tests of the PSU under 25% 50% and 100% load as well as noise and ripple levels but sometimes thats hard to come by.

[saggs]

Well my new PSU came today ended up getting a 700W Cooler Master that got good reviews where ever I looked, I installed it this afternoon along with a spiffy little SSD for my new primary drive.  Installed Windows 7, installed Lightroom and CS4, installed AH,  downloaded and installed Kaspersky anti virus, and Firefox, all with no issues.

Then I played AH for about 2 hrs with no issues.  So I though great, all is well.  



Then just a few minutes ago I click to open Lightroom...  freezes...   black screen...   Nvidia driver failure.      

I don't regret the new PSU, I'm sure I needed it.  But obviously I have another issue as well.  Is it possible I just have a craptastic video card??

I should add that I haven't downloaded the latest Nvidia drivers yet, so it's on whatever older driver that Win 7 stuck it on.  I don't think newer drivers will make a difference though, I tried 3 different drivers before and experienced the same failures with them all.

EDIT: one thing I just though of, could it be motherboard related?    My mobo is still under warranty for several years, but I wouldn't even know where to begin to see if it has any problems.

[saggs]

I like to see reviews that have complete tests of the PSU under 25% 50% and 100% load as well as noise and ripple levels but sometimes thats hard to come by.

Yeah I found some reviews that had all of that on the PSU I ended up getting, but it all went way over my head, so I just skipped ahead to the conclusions, which were positive.

[Chalenge]

Well Skuzzy already told you about the 8400 (pretty much bottom of the stack) but I dont see what there is to lightroom that would cause an issue. Have you run a memory test?

[saggs]

Well Skuzzy already told you about the 8400 (pretty much bottom of the stack) but I dont see what there is to lightroom that would cause an issue. Have you run a memory test?

Yes, I had a system before that was crashing due to memory failure, so the first thing I did was run memtest86+.  Ran it twice and got 0 errors. 

Also on the recommendation of another forum I ran Western Digital's own diagnostic software on my HDDs and got 0 errors.

Yeah Lightroom is not a very graphics intense program so I don't get it, I ran AH for over 2 hrs with no problem and it's much more graphic intense then LR.  But that seems to be whats doing it now, since my last post I've opened and close LR 10 times just to check, and had the Nvidia driver failure on opening once more.

I'm baffled now, but so far I've tested or replaced the following.

PSU is brand new, with plenty of amperage
RAM tested good with memtest86+
Primary drive is brand new SSD, and other 2 HHDs tested good with the manufacturers software.
All programs are fresh installed.

But if it's the vid card that's bad, how come it's failing when I open a program, and not when doing graphically intense stuff? 

I think I'm gonna say screw Nvidia and get an ATI card.  Maybe their drivers don't fail just because they feel like it.

[guncrasher]

check to see if you had the drivers that were recalled a couple of weeks. ago.  iI had to reinstall win7 to make it work.  havent had a problem since then.

semp

[MutleyBR]

check to see if you had the drivers that were recalled a couple of weeks. ago.  iI had to reinstall win7 to make it work.  havent had a problem since then.

semp

Yes , sometime ago Skuzzy issued a warning about Nvidia !96.75 drivers:

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,284786.0.html

Mutley