EVGA 7900GT CO, additional power supply??

[FluffyPirate]

I just bought an Evga 7900 GT CO from newegg and the first night of using it, everything was absolutely beautiful. Then the next morning I boot up and I get a Nvidia message saying that the card's preformance was lowered because the power is not sufficient. So I read the manual and I realize I stupidly forgot to plug in the cable (shown in the picture) from the card to the PSU. The only problem is, I don't know HOW to plug it in. When I plug it in incorrectly, which means every single time, the monitor goes black and refuses to send me to the desktop. As you can see the cable has two white adapters at the end, but there are 3 white adapters that come from the PSU, so I don't know which 2 to use. Should I even be using both of the adapters from that cable?

 

[IfYouHaveToAsk]

find 2 normal molex connectors (the ones that power your optical drive) and plug those in the two white things, then plug the black end into the card.

That should work.

If not your psu may have a black connector already which will fit that might work then again my friend got an xgx 7900gt and his system wounldnt boot up unless we used the adapter.

 

[turtile]

You have to have 2 different rails for each 4 pin molex plug. 21-24 amps on the 12V is also needed.

 

[FluffyPirate]

Turtile, my cousin was over and he suggested the same thing. My mobo is only for a single card, so I removed the 7900gt, put my 6600LE back in, then the 7900gt again with only one of the, err, molex plugs hooked up. Apparently it worked cause Oblivion is now Ultra High with HDR on. Thanks for the responses, this was my first card replacement.

 

[Nubius]

You have to have 2 different rails for each 4 pin molex plug

Umm no, you dont, assuming you are referring to actual +12v rails and not simply saying that you need two seperate connectors.

Fluffy - Plug in each of the white molex connectors to whatever two free ones you have in your case. Just make sure that neither of them are connected to something like a hard drive as the fluctuations from the hard drive will interfere with the card when it tries to draw power. To only have one of them plugged in, you're still starving your card for power. Obviously it's not effecting it as bad as it was beforehand, but you still need to have BOTH molex connectors plugged in.

Plug BOTH in and plug the black part into the card. Both plugs are needed since the PCI-E power has 6 ports and a normal molex only has 4.

(this part is not towards you FluffyPirate as you're obviously somewhat new to the latest hardware changes, so just ignore this part)

It's really not that hard people, it's called an adapter to change one plug style to another.

 

[turtile]

I mean the connections to the PSU. One will have 3 - 4pins and 1 - floppy or something like that. Since they are the same line, it gives the same amount of power as hooking one up to it. So you need two different lines.

 

[Nubius]

Aright, that's why I revised my sentence. When you said 'rails' I thought you meant how some PSU's have different +12v rails, but then I thought about what you wrote and thought perhaps you simply meant two seperate wires.

Anyway, it should still be ok to use two molex connectors off the same line because the PSU will just compensate for the extra power the card needs. I believe I have my card set up like that. It's a 6800GT and it's OC'd to 450/1200 (stock 350/1000) so obviously lack of power isn't an issue in this case and shouldn't be for him.