GeForce 6600 complaining of low power

[LeftyAce]

Hi all,

My brother has a Dell Dimension 8400 desktop, to which I added a GeForce 6600GT video card over a year ago. Two days ago, he received a popup message that said

"The nVidia System Sentinal is reporting that the nVidia powered graphics card is not receiving sufficient power. To protect your hardware from potential damage or causing a system lockup, the graphics processor has lowered its performance to a level that allows continued safe operations."

He has added no new hardware to the machine, which as far as I can tell has a 380W powersupply (I may be remembering incorrectly). He was not playing a game or doing anything intensive at the time (The screenshot he sent me showed no open applications other than the power warning window). The video card does not take its own power plug; it draws it all through the pciX slot, so it's not that a plug has fallen out, I think.

Does anyone know of a reason why a video card would suddenly start to need more power than it's getting? Or is this a sign that his psu is failing? Other ideas?

Thanks in advance,

N3WO

[flanzig1]

He probably needs to clean the dust bunnies out of the heatsink on the video card and CPU and the rest of the PC. Have him check the PSU voltages in the BIOS, PSU could be starting to go.