[ehall]

Hey folks. I have a Gateway with a P4 Lexington 2 mobo. I've tried to upgrade to an EVGA 7800gs agp vid card. For that I need atleast 400watts of 12v and a minimum of 18 amps. I have tried various PSU's from different man.s, but I can't get any of them to do anything but light up the power button. I would like to upgrade, but I'm obviously missing something somewhere. Any help or advice would be appreciated, especially if you've dealt with a Gateway desktop with a similar problem. TIA
the following are the general specs except for the vid card:

17-inch IDE Cable for Ultra/66 Ultra/100 R0 [Part #8004683] Support Docs




Belkin 1394 cable [Part #8005117] Support Docs




Belkin 1394 Cable [Part #8005116] Support Docs




CBL FDD R0 [Part #8004685] Support Docs




CD-ROM Cable R0 [Part #8004682] Support Docs




Cases and Case Hardware

Aegis Desktop Tower Case R0 [Part #3501242] Support Docs




IEEE 1394 Assembly [Part #8006045] Support Docs




Floppy Drives

NEC 1.44-MB Floppy Disk Drive Revision 0 [Part #5502184] Support Docs




Gateway Drivers CD

Gateway Drivers CD 20.1 [Part #7513015] Support Docs




Hard Drives - Find Upgrades

Western Digital 120-GB 7200RPM Hard Drive R1 [Part #5502353] Support Docs




Joysticks

Logitech WingMan Extreme Digital 3D Joystick R3 [Part #7003775] Support Docs




Logitech Wingman Formula Force Steering Wheel R2 [Part #7003781] Support Docs




Keyboards

Multi-function PS/2 Keyboard R0 [Part #7003989] Support Docs




Memory - Find Upgrades

MEM RIMM 256-MB PC800 32MX2 R0 [Part #5000647] Support Docs




Mice

Logitech USB Optical Mouse Revision 5 [Part #7003991] Support Docs




Microsoft Software - Find Upgrades

Microsoft Office XP Small Business Edition [Part #7510471] Support Docs




Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition [Part #7509594] Support Docs




Modems

Gateway V.92 PCI Soft Modem R2 (Palmer) [Part #6002176] Support Docs




RCA Digital Cable Modem Model DCM245R [Part #6002112] Support Docs




Monitors

VX1120 22-inch Monitor With 20-inch Viewable Area [Part #7004035] Support Docs




Motherboards

Intel (Lexington 2) Pentium 4 - 2.8-GHz (533-MHz) R0 [Part #2517112] Support Docs




Network Cards

Broadcom 10/100/1000 Full Bracket Network Adapter [Part #6002309] Support Docs




Optical Drives

Lite-On 48x 24x 48x Recordable/Rewritable CDRW R0 [Part #5502419] Support Docs




Optical Drives or DVD Decoder Cards - Find Upgrades

Panasonic DVD-RAM/R Drive Revision 1 [Part #5502182] Support Docs




Power Supplies

250-Watt Power Supply Revision 3 [Part #6500652] Support Docs









Sound Cards

Sound Blaster Audigy Audio with IEEE 1394 Sound Card [Part #6002172] Support Docs




Speakers

Boston Acoustics BA7800 Analog Speaker System [Part #7003229] Support Docs




Video Cards

NVIDIA NV25 GeForce4 Ti 4600G 128-MB AGP Graphics Card R4 [Part #6002322] Support Docs

these are the mobo specs
Form factor ATX 12.00 × 9.60 inches
Processor Support for an Intel Pentium 4 processor
up to 533-MHz system data bus (System data bus speed is determined by the processor. The minimum speed for the Pentium 4 is 400-MHz)

Memory Two Direct-RDRAM channels with two RIMMs per channel (four RIMM sockets)
Support for up to 2 GB of system memory using PC600 or PC800 RDRAM

Chipset Intel 850 chipset, consisting of:

Intel 82850E MCH
Intel 82801BA ICH2
Intel 82802AB 4-Mb FWH

I/O Control SMSC LPC47M142 LPC bus I/O controller
Video AGP connector supporting 1.5-V 4X AGP cards only
Peripheral interfaces Six USB ports
One serial port
One parallel port
Two IDE interfaces with Ultra DMA 33 and ATA-66/100 support
One disk drive interface
PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports

Expansion capabilities Five PCI bus add-in card connectors (SMBus routed to PCI bus connector 2)
BIOS AMI BIOS (resident in the Intel 82802AB 4-Mb FWH
Support for APM, ACPI, Plug and Play, and SMBIOS

Instantly available PC Support for PCI Local Bus Specification revision 2.2.
Suspend to RAM support
Wake on PCI, CNR, RS-232, front panel, PS/2 keyboard, and USB ports

LAN Wake capabilities Support for system wake-up using an add-in network interface card with remote wake-up capability via the PME# signal
Hardware monitor Voltage sense to detect out-of-range power supply voltages
Thermal sense to detect out-of-range thermal values
Fan control and monitoring

Hardware monitoring features Two fan sense inputs used to monitor fan activity
LAN Intel 82562ET 10/100 Mbps Platform LAN Connect (PLC) device
USB 2.0 Support for USB 2.0 devices
The USB 2.0 option is supported on the front USB ports and the two rear USB ports under the NIC. At this time, this option is only supported in Windows XP and Windows 2000 with installed drivers.

LBA Support for 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA)

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Some Gateway PSUs are non-standard, but what is your Gateway model please?

[Neil Jones]

Some Gateway PSUs are non-standard, but what is your Gateway model please?

[ehall]

the model is 700XL and was built in september of 2002.

[Neil Jones]

Does your computer look like this?
http://support.gatew...3501242mv.shtml

Because according to the case views:
http://support.gatew...3501242tc.shtml

That case doesn't look as if it uses a standard size power supply unit, though this may be down to the way the pictures have come out.

[ehall]

That is the case, but the problem isn't the size, but getting the actual power supply to run the computer. I have an Allied 400W PSU that fits just fine...it just doesn't work.

[Neil Jones]

Oh okay. You have checked the 20/24-pin connection is secure and you've plugged in the 4pin connector too and also any separate connector that the graphics needs? (note: Some PSU units may have more than one 4pin block for the mainboard. If this is the case, use another one.) Failing this, you may have a duff power unit. If the minimum requirement is 400w, you may want to send it back for a bigger unit, preferably 500 or more. It may well be you don't have enough leeway if the card is sucking all the juice. Or failing that, its possible that the Gateway uses its own wiring system which renders any separate PSU unusable, but this is unlikely.

Edited by Neil Jones, 19 September 2007 - 02:33 AM.

[ehall]

I can't find more than one additional 4 pin hook up. I have a PSU with 20 +4 pin hook up. The vid card will run on the 250W PSU that I have and everything boots up and runs. However, it doesn't provide the amps or watts to support any 3d graphics found in most games. I'm changing to the 400w so I don't blow the motherboard. I just can't, for the life of me, figure out why I can't get one of five different PSU's to work. Though the power button lights up when pushed, I don't even hear the fan turn on. I'm going to try a direct connection to the house's electrical outlet, rather than via surge protector. Then I'll trouble shoot from there and let you know. Thanks for your help so far.
E

[Neil Jones]

This sounds like non-standard Gateway wiring has been used and the board is unique, therefore it will probably only work on that power supply due to the way its been made. If this is the case, all you can do is replace the board. No way can five different PSUs have the same fault and the board is the thing in common so it has to be a unique wiring issue.

[PedroDaGR8]

I can't find more than one additional 4 pin hook up. I have a PSU with 20 +4 pin hook up. The vid card will run on the 250W PSU that I have and everything boots up and runs. However, it doesn't provide the amps or watts to support any 3d graphics found in most games. I'm changing to the 400w so I don't blow the motherboard. I just can't, for the life of me, figure out why I can't get one of five different PSU's to work. Though the power button lights up when pushed, I don't even hear the fan turn on. I'm going to try a direct connection to the house's electrical outlet, rather than via surge protector. Then I'll trouble shoot from there and let you know. Thanks for your help so far.
E

What do you mean it oesn't supply the amps or watts to support 3d gaming? DOes that mean when you load a 3-D game it crashes? Or does it not load when you have the graphics card plugged in? YOu are more likely to damage your motherboard plugging in these other power supplies than over taxing a psu. Instead, it should either crash or not start up at all if the amps and wattage aren't enough. Often times, wattage amounts are over exagerated to keep people from buying garbage PSU's like PowMAX, RaidMAX, Allied, Deer (shudder), L&C etc. and wondering why their thing won't load and get angry at Nvidia/ATI. In reality is that these PSU's use over inflated numbers (if you look inside some from allied/raidmax/deer, the boards sometimes will say 400Watt and they advertise it as 750!!! ) I have seen too many computers killed by those brands to EVER trust them EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!