Windows 10: Fatal error: Please Power Down And Connect The Pcie Power Cable ...

[[from wife's laptop]]

This may seem a bit lengthy but Im attempting to provide sufficient info for troubleshooting on the first go.

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
Im experiencing the following fatal error: PLEASE POWER DOWN AND CONNECT THE PCIe POWER CABLE FOR THIS GRAPHICS CARD (apologies for all caps but that's how it's actually displayed)

The first occurrence was two weeks ago immediately following a Win 10 Nvidia driver update (the driver was much older than what was installed but still potentially only coincidental I suppose) while working in (current version) VirtualBox.

I powered down, waited a hr and the machine booted fine and then functioned acceptably for the ensuing week.

Initial research indicated either [A] a hardware problem; poorly seated/incorrectly connected cables, insufficient/dying PSU, dirty interior/PCIe lane, old/dying GPU and corrupted PCIe lane OR display driver conflict.

Since:

• the GPU is new, high end of mid-range, recently installed and has been functioning flawlessly for 3 mo.
• the PSU is two yr old and calculations of the aggregate power requirement of my build ranged from 390w to 420w
• apparently vBox has long been known for causing fatal device driver conflicts (per a fairly reliable source, my brother-in-law)

I focused on resolving the driver possibility.

I used a tool called DDU to purge Nvidia from the system and reinstalled the proper Nvidia drivers; this initially seemed to have solved the problem.

On Mon/Tue last week I forget which Win 10 installed an AMD based generic display driver and a new problem emerged when the video signal was again lost shortly after the update install. The only available solution was power down with power button, wait a bit and cold boot. While this could also be coincidental but the timing seems suspicious.

For the past week a variable amount of time-- occasionally 2-3 minutes but could go for an hour or so -- after starting each morning the video signal would be lost necessitating the physical power down/cold boot. After that it ran fine for the rest of the day (approx. 14hrs).

The same cycle started today but when trying to cold boot instead of POSTing normally the PLEASE POWER DOWN AND CONNECT THE PCIe POWER CABLE FOR THIS GRAPHICS CARD message was displayed.

At present the machine will boot if left off for 1530 minutes but in only 23 minutes the vid signal is lost. My last attempt I entered EUFI/BIOS reported system temp was 36 C (which is normal) and even only sitting in BIOS vid signal was lost in less than 5 min.

Yesterday I logged performance (using HWinfo) for about 9 hrs. All but two indicators (based on my 65 yr old memory) were within expected ranges: all temps running in high 20s/low 30s (or about 812 degrees above ambient),CPU & GPU usage averaging 14% and 16% respectively and CPU cores clocking in the green (cant remember the numbers). The two indicators outside the norm were (again from memory) Performance limiter flags: GT:Residency State Regulation & GT:Running Average Thermal Limit, both of which were Yes.

Windows memtest & sfc /scannow were run successfully last week with no errors found.

Any help you can provide will be much appreciated,

:)

 

PCIe Cable Power Consumption Question

What's up ladies and gents.

I have a question regarding PCIe power consumption for graphics cards. I've searched around and I get a very divided answer to this: Should I use a single power cable with x2 6+2 split on a GPU with slots over 8? or use two seperate 6+2 power cables? I know that the PCIe x16 slot itself give power (75w-ish?), but how much watt does each cable give exactly? I've read that one cable with a split like this is OK for a card that draw less than 215-225w, but I was looking at the Asus ROG RTX 2070 Super card and it has x2 8 slots connectors. The PSU is going to be the Corsair RMx 750w.

Users behind using two cables says it's safer, while users behind one cable says it doesn't matter as long as the card doesn't exceed the total wattage on the cables. I'm not going to overclock. Can anyone share a light to this conundrum? Or maybe share what you're using? All help and info is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

No post beep and "please power down and connect the pcie power cables"

OP stated they only plugged one of the cables into the graphics card when it requires two. "When I plug the video card into my tv via hdmi I get the message "please power down and connect the pcie power cables". I have plugged one cable in but my power supply that came with my case seems to only have one of the two pcie cables." Also in my post I said about perhaps buying a new PSU that has sufficient connectors or using adaptors could be a viable temporary fix - I never like having to use adaptors, I feel dirty when I do (especially the molex to 6pin PCIe ones) .

 

Windows 10 shutdown power still light and fan still working

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

I understand that the laptop will not shutdown completely. We will help you.

I suggest you to try the below steps and check if it helps you.

• Remove all the externally connected devices and cables including the battery.
• Hold the power button for about a minute and release the power button.
• Connect only the power cable and power on the PC.
• Check if the issue persists.

Keep us posted to help you better.