Hello Community,

I have a Precision 690 bought used which I am building. It has a Matrox G45X4QUAD-BF graphics card. I got this model no. from a sticker on the card. Matrox website doesn't list this model although the search engines do have references for drivers et al.

My problem is I have had this thing running for days at a time and then during part shuffles had it fail to boot stalling at the lit up 2 4 during post which according to the troubleshooting guide is graphics failure. I'm pretty sure I haven't killed it with an ESD because it keeps making it past that part of POST occasionally.

One of my theories is that I have over burdened the PSU by putting 6 HDDs and 2 SSDs in the box. the 2 SSDs and 2 of the HDDs are getting power from the IDE rail with two Molex to SATA power splitters. My PSU is the 750W version.

Second theory is that the Graphics card is just dodgy.

1. because for one thing, there is a screw broken off in one of the female threads you connect the head of your DVI cable to indicating a violent past.

2. Secondly the fan onboard the graphics card fails to turn despite being plugged in to the onboard 2 pin power connector. Possibly the fan failed and then the card suffered heat damage?

3. Third, I have had a couple of times when I got those beautiful abstract patterns on my monitor that didn't very much resemble my BIOS flash screen.

QUESTION:

Does anyone else out there have this type of problem with this type of graphics card or is it just me.

Does anyone know if I could be suffering from an under powered PSU causing the boot to fail due to insufficient voltage during the boot cycle? I could just unplug most of the drives and figure that out but it doesn't make any sense that I was able to load an operating system onto the machine and work on it before this recent spat of bad luck.

Any clues would be much appreciated. I have high hopes for this box and I'm sure it will come together but I just don't want to move too soon and spend time and money on stuff without knowing if I need to.

Thanks