Thread: Bad PCI-Power Adapter

Yesterday evening I did some overdue maintenance on my main HTPC. This PC sort of acts as the server in my home, my DVR (via CETON card), and game console through Steam Big Picture. It is stored in an enclosed space, and doesn't have much room to breathe, so it is super important that it gets a nice dust removal/cleaning every two months.

This time I was also adding a PCI-E 1x card that would allow me to hook up my USB 3.0 port from the front of my case (the motherboard is Socket 1156 and does not support it natively). When I was in there, I had to take the only available Molex connector and add a "Y" cable so I could power all of my devices.

When I put things back together and loaded windows, suddenly the GPU (GTX 760) started spinning the fans at 100%! I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on. Did the little PCI-E 1x card obstruct the fans so the card couldn't breathe? I assumed it would only spin up if the temps were out of control, which was certainly a possibilty in this cramped Micro-ATX box. (See image below - this was taken prior to upgrading to the GTX 760)



After meddling around with this thing for over an hour, I brought up HWMonitor and started looking over EVERYTHING. Then it hit me... the GPU was not reporting a fan speed. It was simply BLANK. Hmm... Why the HELL would it be blank? I decided I would basically re-run all of my wiring from scratch. I got down to just the Graphics card and the boot SSD hooked up, and the problem was not resolved. I swapped out the adapter 2 x 4 pin Molex to 6 pin PCI-E adapter, and suddenly it started working again!

I wired everything back up, and everything was resolved. I guess there was something wrong with the stupid adapter that was powering my GPU that was not activating the "brain" of the fan controller. I don't know exactly how that works, but I know there is fan controller on the card that can be configured by temp or other user specifications. I bet the fan defaults to 100% if there is an error on detecting either temperature or current fan speed.

A 15 minute job took me two hours to fix. So frustrating, but I am glad to have everything resolved.

Originally Posted by HeavyG

A 15 minute job took me two hours to fix. So frustrating, but I am glad to have everything resolved.

Ah the joys of troubleshooting computers. :-)

Glad to hear you got it sorted out.


sent from enfNATION