Sufficient power for Sapphire R9 290

fz2011

New member
Hello good folks,

I am placed with a dilemma, i just finished up building a rig for my cousin. He already purchased all the components and i kind of assembled them. Turns out the system was not displaying anything, i investigated further taking apart each component and it turns out the problem is in the graphics card. Below is the system spec:

Motherboard: MSI Gaming 7,
Processor: i5-4690K
Graphics Card: Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X
Ram: G.Skill Trident 16GB
Cooler: Stock
Power Supply: Cooler Master V550S
Storage: 1TB Segate Barracuda

My questions are:
1. Is 550W enough to run this spec
2. Is there any chance by using a low wattage PSU could damage the GPU anyway?

The vendor is claiming that the graphics card is damaged because of using low wattage PSU, which i do not believe. Should i test using another R9 290 Tri-X?

Tom i would love to hear your feedback in this,

Thanks
 
you should be able to boot with 550w with that setup. 160w idle and 440 load for gpu

quick noob question, did you connect monitor to the graphics card directly? all cables in place? display output set correctly? bios set to display from pcie? connected pcie power cables? any sounds/noises/beeps or error codes?
 
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you should be able to boot with 550w with that setup. 160w idle and 440 load for gpu

quick noob question, did you connect monitor to the graphics card directly? all cables in place? display output set correctly? bios set to display from pcie? connected pcie power cables? any sounds/noises/beeps or error codes?

Yes i connected the monitor to the card directly and i did not forget connecting the power cables for the card, the thing is i tested by placing another card to the rig and everything is fine.

Initially after i setup the rig it showed a Post debug code of A2, after digging the forum found that i needed to disconnect the HDD, which i did then the post showed 99 and followed with the temp reading. When i switched the cards everything was booting fine. When you mentioned the PSU was ok for IDLE whats the minimum for R9 290, i watched a video from tom where he was running a 780 TI with an RM 450. I would imagine a 550 can run a R9 290 card.

Thanks
 
Unless the PSU was known to be defective they should honor the graphics card warranty.

JR

That they will but do i need to change the PSU and go with a higher power PSU like 650W. PCParpicker showed the total requirement for my spec is around 450W, should i stick with the 550W and should i dare to test it in another R9 290.
 
it should be fine tbh but I would of gone with a 600w minimum anyway but thats just me, I ran my system with 2x 7950 amd gpus with a 650w gold power supply and had 0 issues untill I swapped to more power hungry 290's then I could only run one card.

I had to upgrade to a 850w psu even though at full load with both cards it was pulling just under 630w at the wall..

I have no idea what amd did but for some reason the r9 series cards seem to demand far more than they need.
 
it should be fine tbh but I would of gone with a 600w minimum anyway but thats just me, I ran my system with 2x 7950 amd gpus with a 650w gold power supply and had 0 issues untill I swapped to more power hungry 290's then I could only run one card.

I had to upgrade to a 850w psu even though at full load with both cards it was pulling just under 630w at the wall..

I have no idea what amd did but for some reason the r9 series cards seem to demand far more than they need.

Yah my thoughts the same they should be fine but any chance a low Watt power supply can take out a graphics card?
 
Yah my thoughts the same they should be fine but any chance a low Watt power supply can take out a graphics card?

nope in fact it should not affect it worse case it was undervolted and didnt have enough power to cycle or the card was DOA..

there is something to know if the psu was a dud it would instantly shutdown, can cause instability and bad performance I personally would tell your cousin to get a better psu look at corsair gold 600w minimum to be on the complete safe side.
 
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Should i experiment with a friends R9 290 card, any chance that might kill it as well?


I would not try it tbh knowing that it could not power the 1st one you are asking for trouble if the psu suddenly starts smoking don't say I didn't warn you it can kill more than just a gpu when it has insignificant power even though there meant to shutdown some don't and can EXPLODE.

here is a response from johnny guru's website i.e the PSU man >

"Under-powering components won't damage them as such. Really they should just work or not work.
Where the problem lies is if you place too much demand on your PSU which would lead to it failing. At that point there could be a voltage spike which could fry almost anything on your PC."

EDIT: I just read the full review for that psu and its a gold rated high effiency model but has a total combined amperage of 45amps and the 290 series cards according to amds own website need 50 amps this could be your problem looks like you would need the 600/650w version :-/
 
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EDIT: I just read the full review for that psu and its a gold rated high effiency model but has a total combined amperage of 45amps and the 290 series cards according to amds own website need 50 amps this could be your problem looks like you would need the 600/650w version :-/

The 290x requires 48amps. 290 would probably require the same amount but either way it's still too much for the PSU. I'd get a new PSU and if it doesn't fix it, probably ruined the card
 
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Did anyone read the OP :eek: Irrespective of if the PSU is good enough, which it isn't. If the card has never worked then it won't have been loaded and damaged by the PSU. Either there was an issue with the installation of the card hardware or software/driver wise OR it was DOA and never worked at all.

The only way your PSU could have destroyed the card would be if you had successfully installed it then loaded it to beyond safe limits of the PSU, the OCP had failed to shut off the PSU and the PSU had exploded in the process overvolting the card and other hardware and breaking that too.

Which considering your hardware and original explanation I very much doubt you have done, especially without knowing about it.


OP: Do you still have all of the components in your possession? Has the retailer/manufacturer tested the graphics card to confirm if it's defective or not?

JR
 
Did anyone read the OP :eek: Irrespective of if the PSU is good enough, which it isn't. If the card has never worked then it won't have been loaded and damaged by the PSU. Either there was an issue with the installation of the card hardware or software/driver wise OR it was DOA and never worked at all.

Ya we did read it. Never said anything about all of a sudden it stopped displaying. All it said was it wasn't displaying anything. OP needs to confirm it's the GPU. If everything displays off the Motherboard/iGPU then it would be the GPUs fault. None of that has been done(he didn't mention it) so really the only thing that stands out is the low end PSU.
 
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