Weirdest GPU Problem ever..

[LNW]

Okay, so you guys need to bear with me through this, as the thought may make you cringe, but you need to understand my buddy is REALLY poor.

 

Okay, so I recently gave my buddy an old HP Compaq. Non-standard power supply, non standard board, you know the deal. So he went and bought a 550 ti for $60, and a molex to 6 pin adapter. But the power supply didn't have molex. So, i gave him some off brand (possibly half dead) power supply out of an old PC I fixed a few months ago. Which wasn't compatible with the motherboard..so he Frankensteined this PC to have two power supplies. One for the GPU, and one for the rest of the PC.

 

It powers up and runs windows perfectly fine, got all the latest drivers installed. But when he opens a game, the monitor goes black, and acts as if there's no signal. Do you suppose it is the power supplies fault? I'm sure this type of situation has never even been thought of before, so that's why I asked here.

[Kyuubixchidori]

Okay, so you guys need to bear with me through this, as the thought may make you cringe, but you need to understand my buddy is REALLY poor.

 

Okay, so I recently gave my buddy an old HP Compaq. Non-standard power supply, non standard board, you know the deal. So he went and bought a 550 ti for $60, and a molex to 6 pin adapter. But the power supply didn't have molex. So, i gave him some off brand (possibly half dead) power supply out of an old PC I fixed a few months ago. Which wasn't compatible with the motherboard..so he Frankensteined this PC to have two power supplies. One for the GPU, and one for the rest of the PC.

 

It powers up and runs windows perfectly fine, got all the latest drivers installed. But when he opens a game, the monitor goes black, and acts as if there's no signal. Do you suppose it is the power supplies fault? I'm sure this type of situation has never even been thought of before, so that's why I asked here.

not enough power is getting to the GPU. so it turns off under load

[SImoHayha]

Okay, so you guys need to bear with me through this, as the thought may make you cringe, but you need to understand my buddy is REALLY poor.

 

Okay, so I recently gave my buddy an old HP Compaq. Non-standard power supply, non standard board, you know the deal. So he went and bought a 550 ti for $60, and a molex to 6 pin adapter. But the power supply didn't have molex. So, i gave him some off brand (possibly half dead) power supply out of an old PC I fixed a few months ago. Which wasn't compatible with the motherboard..so he Frankensteined this PC to have two power supplies. One for the GPU, and one for the rest of the PC.

 

It powers up and runs windows perfectly fine, got all the latest drivers installed. But when he opens a game, the monitor goes black, and acts as if there's no signal. Do you suppose it is the power supplies fault? I'm sure this type of situation has never even been thought of before, so that's why I asked here.

What is his entire build ?

[LNW]

What is his entire build ?

Some off brand HP Compaq, with a nonstandard board, 4gb of ram, 2 ssd's, and an intel core 2 quad q9650 i believe.

[LNW]

not enough power is getting to the GPU. so it turns off under load

Thanks so much! That was my theory, but I'm an amateur in the world of PC's, so I wanted to be sure.