Club 3D 7800GT Power Cable Setup

[HiPPeR]

Hello everybody

I am wondering if anybody could tell me what is a correct power setup for this card. With the card i got a 6pin to 2x 4pin power cable converter but i also have two 6pin power cables that came with the Tagan 580W EasyCon power supply. Currently i got it setup with the converter and both 4pin cables plugged in with the psu 4pin power cables.

Could i use the 6pin power cable that came with the power supply instead of the converter?

Or would that possibly damage the card or it wouldn’t get enough power? As with this setup I’m running out of 4 pin power cables and i wouldn’t be able to run a SLI system.

Thing is firstly i had a 6800GT from club3d and it worked for about 3 sec. i RMA-ed it and paid something extra for the 7800GT and the retail shop phoned me that the 6800GT wasn’t properly powered and a capacitor blew up. They told me to use the converter rather then the PSUs 6pin power cable.
The info for this came directly from the distributor of the club3d card here in Slovenia btw.

[movinginthedark]

Thats weird? The 6 pin header you refer to I am presuming is the PCI-e power connecter. I cant think of any other 6 pin graphics adapter, unless you tried connecting a SATA connector :p but that would be stupid.

The 4 pin spliter that allows you to connect molex is fair enough, I can see why the PCI-e connector should blow a capacitor? But if it does and the 4 pin works then use the 4 pin - simple as that.

Hope this helps?! :D

[HiPPeR]

Yea you presumed correctly i didn’t try and run the card on the SATA power cable lol that be stupid indeed.

Well at the moment the setup as it is works fine. Still as i pointed out if i buy me a 2nd 7800GT card its gonna be tight with the 4 pin molex power cables as with the current setup they are all used up and i got 2 free 6 pin PCI-e power cables that came with the PSU and they are picking up dust at the moment.

And that’s indeed weird with the story from the distributor that the capacitor blew up because i didn’t use the right cable. Actually they said it blew up cause it overheated but the card never ran.....

I’d like to have some confirmation from Club3D about this issue and this is the only forum that deals with Club3D cards the other option would be to contact Club3D via email support i guess.

[movinginthedark]

If the card is designed to run off of a 6 pin PCI-e header then it should do, I presume it must have just been a 1 off thing?

[HiPPeR]

Card has only 1 6pin PCI-e header but with it came the converter from 6pin PCIe --> 2 4pin molex. Question is if the converter is to be used by users that have old PSUs that don’t come with the 6pin PCI-e power cables or does the card requires so much power that it needs the converter and both 4pin plugs to be plugged in.

The technician from the retail store told me the card consumes 200W+ power (which is total bull**** if you ask me as this card uses max of 90W) and that one power cable from the Tagan PSU can deliver max 125W of power so that’s why there’s the need for the converter.

[movinginthedark]

200Watts....errrrmmm...was he refering to 1 or 2 cards?? Even so - you would be hard pushed to find 2 PCI that eat 100Watts each?? Although, I think he may have over exagerated to ensure that you have a powerfull enough PSU?

The card will use 1X PCI-e header, per card, hence the reason for your PSU having 2. Dont bother with the spliter if you can help it, it just means more cables everywhere = untidy = decreased airflow = decreased cooling = more heat = less performance = hardware dies quicker....

Go with the PCI-e headers lol :D

[HiPPeR]

200W were meant to be for 1 card.

Well MSI has this on there page:

NOTE:
1. The supplied power cable must be attached to ensure the card worksproperly.
2. Always connect or disconnect the supplied power cable when the system power is off.

For the 7800GT...

Direct Link to MSIs page (http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/vga/vga/pro_vga_detail.php?UID=689)

I wish Club3D would give more details about this on there page or even in there e-manual. :(

[latency]

Hipper- can you shorted your sig down a bit, it's wearing out my finger to scroll past it over and over again...

The 6-pin PCI-E conenctors carry twin 12v lines- same as connecting two molex cables to them.
Saying it's better to use the the molex converters is ******** becuase PCI-E cables have a seperate chain and thus provide cleaner power than the molex lines do.

And I aggree that one card does cirtainly NOT use 200w of power.
My 7800GT 412MHz is rated at roughly 87w, and I run it together with an Opteron 148 on a 300w PSU.

If the PCI-E connector was really not giving enough power, then you want to have your beef with your powersupply- although I'd think better of a Targan 580w...

[HiPPeR]

Reduced the size of the sig ;)

Well i tried the tagan PSU in a different PC but i couldn’t try the PCI-e cable as the gfx card was a 9800pro and that one needs only a 4pin molex and the PSU works fine with the current power setup and i didn’t try to power the 7800GT with the PCI-e power cable as i am truly afraid i could damage the card.

Thing is the RMA-ed 6800GT worked with the PCI-e cable but not all the time 10 out 1 tries the system POSTed and it worked very stable without any crashes just i couldn’t get it to POST every time as the 6800GT didn’t get any juice...

[Fireblade]

Reduced the size of the sig ;)

If that's a "reduced" version of it... I dread to think what the original must've looked like :eek:

Please acquaint yourself with our 'Signature Sizes Rules' (http://forums.kustompcs.co.uk/showthread.php?t=24001) rules (particularly the very first line!), and amend it again accordingly.

Ta muchly... and a belated welcome to the forums :D

[Big Adam]

I've tweaked the sig. :)

[Fireblade]

Good man... ta :cool:

But why folks can't just do it like that in the first place, is beyond me :rolleyes:

[HiPPeR]

Sorry for the sig i never thought 8 or 9 lines of text would offend/annoy people so much. Thank you Big Adam for further tweaking my sig :D :D also thanks to the people who replied to my original post/problem...

[Sub]

i'd always choose a "pure" PCI-ex power line over 2 "makeshift" molex's, especially on anything with tagan written on the side :)
seriously tell that technician to ask for a job application for PCWorldm, sounds like that's where he belongs tbh.

[Fireblade]

Sorry for the sig i never thought 8 or 9 lines of text would offend/annoy people so much.

You should understand HiPPeR... that I/we weren't having a go at you just for the sake of it. That's not our style on here :cool:

It wasn't just the size of the sig which annoyed us.

It's the fact that... even though they're new to a forum... many new members have obviously never bothered to check for any rules regarding the signature sizes we allow?
They simply use what they want, thinking it'll be hunky-dory. It might very well be a signature they're used to using - but that's not an acceptable excuse IMO.

They need to bear in mind this is a family forum - run by a shop/omline store. We therefore can't allow many of the images some other... shall we say "less-restrictive" forums allow :D

Whilst many forums are happy to let members use whatever size signature they want. I've seen some monstrosities in my time (in fact I still see them)... so I'm glad this forum isn't one of them :eek:

I hope that clarifies the situation... and here endeth the lesson :p

[HiPPeR]

I wrote about this to Club3D tech support i`ll copy & paste the reply

Hi there

Since this was a technical question I spoke with our tech department and Raymond gave the answer below, hope this helps.

Hi Gary,

If he uses the special PCIe VGA powerline of the Targan it should not give a problem. He needs to make sure that those powerlines are not meant for server mainboards.

Regards,

Raymond

Many Thanks



I also phoned the retail shop and told em what the reply from Club3D was and the technician said that he tried the card on the PCI-e 6pin power cable and it worked but he played it safe and wen`t for the 2x 4pin molex converter as he thought i`d be probably overclocking the card and that way it should be more stable. :rolleyes: I told em that i just wan`t a SLI ready PC so that i can in near future get me another 7800GT and don`t have to worry about power setups and if the PSU is faulty or anything...

Edit: I put the card on the PCIe 6pin power cable direct from the PSU and it works...