Short version: My computer doesn't turn on most of the time with my new graphics card installed. But when it does turn on, it works fine. What's up with that?
I just got myself a nice new graphics card (a Gigabyte GeForce GT740) for my desktop. I plugged it in, turned on my computer, installed the drivers, restarted a few times to install some updates, and played Dark Souls for a while. Then I turned the computer off, and couldn't turn it back on again.
When I pushed the power button once, the cpu and case fans twitched a moment, and the HDD light flashed on. Subsequent pushes didn't even do that, although if I turned off the power supply for a moment, I could get another twitch and blink.
I disconnected and reconnected some cables and components for a while, and I somehow managed to get it to turn on again once. As far as I can tell, it was the same configuration as before. Again, it ran for several hours without any problems. Then I turned it off again, and it went back to fan twitch mode.
If I put the old graphics card back in, everything works normally.
I understand that these symptoms are indicative of a power supply problem. But it seems strange that it would cause problems at startup, but run fine under load. Or that it would start up once, but not again. What do you think, Internet?
Addendum:
I put the new graphics card back in yesterday, and it worked again, for several hard boots over the course of a few hours. Maybe it had something to do with being warmed up? But I tried turning it on again this morning, and it had stopped again. I unplugged what I could afford to unplug (a DVD drive, a HDD, and a USB add-on card), but that wasn't enough to make it work again.
Addendum II: The Specs
Here, in gory detail, is what's in my computer right at this moment:
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Galaxy GeForce 8400 GS
Thermaltake TR2 430W PSU, W0070
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+
2 x 2GB G.Skill DDR2 RAM
ASUS DRW-2014L1T IDE DVD-RW drive
Seagate Barracuda 250GB IDE HDD
Syba SY-PEX20140 PCI USB card
2 IDE-to-SATA adapters (Rosewill RC-204 and SYBA SY-ADA40011)
The new graphics card I'm trying to install is a
Gigabyte GeForce GT 740.
Incidentally, that new card has a PCIE2.0 interface, but I've only got a PCIE1.0 slot to put it in on the motherboard. They're supposed to be compatible, but could that be a problem?