300W PS can't power this?

[Stereodude]

So, I slapped this PC together for my parents out of some old stuff I had, and I had a Antec PP-303XP "300W" PS. It won't start the PC due to excessive load on the PS. It tries to start and gives out after about 3-5 seconds. It starts fine with both of the HDs unplugged. I also powered one of the HDs from an external brick and it worked fine also.

Here's the system:
Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton)
512MB of PC3200 DDR RAM running at 333mHz
MSI KT4VL (KT400)
Onboard NIC & Sound
nVidia Geforce 6200 (AGP 8x)
Liteon 16x DVD-ROM
2 WD800JB HDs (7200RPM)

The PS is rated:
3.3V: 20A
5.0V: 30A
(max combined 3.3V + 5.0V 180W)
12.0V: 15A
(max combined 3.3V + 5.0V +12V 278W)

Here's the semi "weird" thing... If I put a old GF3Ti200 in place of the 6200 it works fine (except for some driver issue using the nVidia drivers). An ATI 8500LE works about 1/2 the time (starts pretty much every other time).

The really weird part... The same PS powered the following system before (as of a few weeks ago) without any issues.

Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) OC'd to 2.0833GHz
512MB of PC2700 DDR RAM running at 333mHz
MSI KT4VL (KT400)
nVidia Geforce 6600GT (AGP 8x)
Firewire card
Intel Gigabit NIC
M-Audio Revolution 7.1 (sound card)
Dvico Fusion 5 Gold (HDTV card)
MIT MyHD MDP-100 (HDTV card)
2 Liteon 16x DVD-ROM
1 40GB Toshiba 4200RPM 2.5"
1 250GB Seagate 7200.9

Did this PS magically lose it's ability to power a system in the past few weeks, or are those WD800JB's extreme power hogs on start?

 

[Bozo]

Do you have a section in your BIOS where you can delay the start of the hard drives?

I have an Antec 300W power supply booting:

Intel 845EBGS
ATI 9200
2-Promise Ultra 100
1-Adaptec 1210a
512MB Crucial
3-Com NIC
Pextor CD burner
Floppy
36GB WD Raptor
2-WD1200JB
1-ST330083

Hard to believe the video card makes that much of a difference.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Stereodude]

I checked in the BIOS and there's no HD delay.

I tried a few other HDs. I can power 2 5400RPM WD HDs, but not 1 7200 WD. I tried one more 800JB, and a few 1200JBs.

 

[ddrueding]

That is really wierd stereodude...and I applaud your research before posting!

 

[Buck]

During spinup, the WD800JB peaks at roughly 1.43A for the 12V line and peaks at roughly 350mA for the 5V line.

It is also possible that one of the new system components is faulty.

 

[Stereodude]

The entire machine is reused except the graphics card. Nothing else in it is new.

 

[mubs]

The same power supply worked flawlessly (still is) powering this confguration every day for 5+ years:

Tyan dual-CPU motherboard
2 x P3-800 overclocked to 900 MHz
4 x 256 MB RAM
1 x AGP 2x ATI 9000
1 x PCI Promise Ultra
1 x PCI NIC
1 x PCI Turtle Beach Soundcard
1 x PCI 3-port Firewire card
1 x PCI 4-port USB 2.0 Card
1 x DVD burner
1 x DVD-ROM
2 x Quantum Fireball 30GB HDDs later replaced with 2 x WD HDDs 120 GB HDDs later replaced with 2 x Seagate 160 GB HDDs

As Buck said something died in the process of setting up this machine or you have a co-incidental failure of the PS. I've had more of these co-incidental failures than I care to remember. They throw off your debugging leaving you barking up the wrong tree.

 

[Stereodude]

Well, I replaced the Antec with an older "300W" supply and the machine works fine.

The new supply is rated:
3.3V: 13A
5.0V: 30A
12.0V: 12A

So, I guess that 300W Antec PS has assumed room temp.