Computer hardware newbie here so go easy on me. I have a recently bought emachines with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ that I wanted to upgrade with a new video card. About a month ago I go out and get a GeForce 6600 GT OC card, install it and everything is working fine. Everything about the computer is the same as when I bought it, the same default case, same default motherboard, etc. I also don't do any overclocking, I've kept the default settings on the card.
Two days ago I was playing a game and suddenly the entire computer froze, so I turned it off and went to bed. The next morning I turned it on, no problems, and left it on all day. My computer has a screen saver thats fairly graphics intensive keep in mind. When I came home in the afternoon, the computer was off and no matter how hard I tried I could not get the computer to turn on. I do a little bit of digging and realize that my computer only has a 300W power supply but the video card says it needs minimum of 350W. I think this is odd considering everything worked fine for a month but I take out the video card, and the computer works fine again.
Today I went out and got a new power supply, a 430W Antech TruePower 2.0 and install it as well as plug back in the video card. I turn it on, the computer starts for a second then shuts down, and a little bit of smoke comes out of the video card. Tried it one more time and same result. Take the card out and computer works fine.
Now the problem is, I'm not sure what exactly happened. It appears I've killed the card somehow, but since I wasn't home when it died the first time I don't know if the smoke is because of the new more powerful power supply or if it smoked the first time as well with the old power supply. In other words, I don't know what possibly killed it.
Is there something obvious to you guys? I certainly don't want to shell out more money for a video card if I'm doing something wrong or if this current one is possibly still usable.
Two days ago I was playing a game and suddenly the entire computer froze, so I turned it off and went to bed. The next morning I turned it on, no problems, and left it on all day. My computer has a screen saver thats fairly graphics intensive keep in mind. When I came home in the afternoon, the computer was off and no matter how hard I tried I could not get the computer to turn on. I do a little bit of digging and realize that my computer only has a 300W power supply but the video card says it needs minimum of 350W. I think this is odd considering everything worked fine for a month but I take out the video card, and the computer works fine again.
Today I went out and got a new power supply, a 430W Antech TruePower 2.0 and install it as well as plug back in the video card. I turn it on, the computer starts for a second then shuts down, and a little bit of smoke comes out of the video card. Tried it one more time and same result. Take the card out and computer works fine.
Now the problem is, I'm not sure what exactly happened. It appears I've killed the card somehow, but since I wasn't home when it died the first time I don't know if the smoke is because of the new more powerful power supply or if it smoked the first time as well with the old power supply. In other words, I don't know what possibly killed it.
Is there something obvious to you guys? I certainly don't want to shell out more money for a video card if I'm doing something wrong or if this current one is possibly still usable.
