I recently bought a GeForce 6800XT card (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1828833&Sku=P450-8576) and purchased a 500W power supply (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1273338&Sku=ULT31846).

The reason of my purchase is because both products were in tigerdirect's best sellers and I didn't see a negative review on either.

My problem came to me last night. I wake to find that my computer had restarted itself. It had never done this before. Normally the card stays at about 70 degrees F and it can get up to 80 degrees F playing video games. I've actually considered taking the side casing off for better ventilation during the time I'm playing video games.

There was a time when I finished playing Half-Life 2, and I restarted my PC. Once windows loaded, it stated that my graphical card was not getting adequate power and that it was switching to a lower gpu processing speed.

Do you think my PC is restarting because it is overheating or because of the power supplied to the video card?

Thank you for any considerate responses.

Could be either of those.

What are your temps lately?

Have you hooked up a multimeter to the PSU yet to test voltages?

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My temps for the card has been about 70-73 degrees F.

I use to have my PSU power connector going from the PSU, to the DVD-RW, to the DVD-ROM, to my video card. I've changed it now to where my video card has its own power connector. I've noticed that since I've done that I never get the prompt stating that I don't have adequate power to the video card.

Is the voltage distributed any differently doing a daisy chain with the power cord vs. a component having its own power connector?

I'll have to test the voltage of my PSU. I've never done it before so I'll have to do some research on it.

Thank you for your response.

Im not an expert, but I can share my experience.
I had the same problem as you.
When I had a 6600GT, I found that only connectiing the HD power cable into the card would make it run properly. If I would connect any of the other power cables into the card, the computer would hang up occasionally. However, if I connected the HD power cable into the card, everything would be fine. I am talking about the HD power cable that also has the small floppy power cable springing out of it. I found that this was the only cable that worked, no other cable worked for my card.

Sarosh

Thank you for your input dsarosh. My card would never hang with me daisy changing it with other components of the computer, but ever since I put a separate power connector to my video card, I stop getting the message that my video was not receiving an adequate amount of power.

The cable that I was using was the one that had the floppy drive connector attached to it.

Yeah, a dedicated line is recommended. A direct link to the PSU, meaning one Medusa head of three molex connectors should only be for the precious video card. The card's manuel would have told you the same, had you read it.

So then, I guess we answered our own question?

Thanks for the input guys. My manual never mentioned how the power to the video card should be connected.