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Is this normal?

S

Shroomie

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 3, 2004
Messages
137
I have an Enermax 465w PSU, and my BIOS only shows 11.6V on the 12V rail, and Speedfan only shows 11.1V. Is that normal?

I was having some instability problems for awhile but they seem to have been fixed with my last reformat. I'm just wonmdering if this could have played a role (even a minor one) in that.
 
Shroomie said:
I have an Enermax 465w PSU, and my BIOS only shows 11.6V on the 12V rail, and Speedfan only shows 11.1V. Is that normal?

I was having some instability problems for awhile but they seem to have been fixed with my last reformat. I'm just wonmdering if this could have played a role (even a minor one) in that.
Click to expand...
The rails can be off a bit...does that particular PSU have adjustable rails?

But no, i dont think that that small ammount of a change would mess your shit up, but i admit i dont know too much about that.
 
Ok. All my other ones were dead on(or slightly over), so that's why I was wondering.

I have a really nice multimeter around here somewhere. I havn't used it in forever though so I'll have to dig it out.
 
if it is showing low with the DMM
thats a possible sign its overloaded
so try removing some of the load, and or lowering the PSUs temperature
(have it not vent the case) and see what effect that has

cut and paste
Ice Czar said:
closer to the reference value is better than either higher or lower
stuff also doesnt tend to get fried from lower values as much as higher values
anything higher than the 5% range is called an overshoot and that fries most stuff
anything lower is called an undershoot and that makes things unstable


for reference Basic Spec compliance of 5% is
+12V....11.4V to 12.6V
+5V......4.75V to 5.25V
+3.3V...3.135V to 3.465V
but its also a dynamic range
the supply converts power from AC to DC as the load changes from the components
well it also has to keep the reference voltages within the range above while it doing that
so measuring at one point is like watching a single frame in a movie
so logging the voltage is a good idea

that said your BIOS and software is lying to you
what you dont know is by what amount
for that youd need to measure it with a multimeter
cheap ones can be had for $20 or $30 though their accuracy isnt all that much better than the BIOS
they scale up to hundreds of dollars and increasing accuracy

ideally you calibrate your software to a hard measurement (like at idle)
then log till your confident that your within spec at all times

a high reference voltage at idle means that while the supply might be regulating the load within its own parameter,
under some circumstances it could be letting overshoots through
now there are advantages to having a higher reference value if your overclocking
but only if your not allowing overshoots
thats one of the reasons overclockers like supplies with tighter than spec load regulation
so instead of a supply with a range of 5% regulation it has 3% or 1%
and can thus have a higher reference value without letting through overshoots ;)

most components can deal with higher than 5% values and are commonly tested to survive split second 10% values, but these wear on the components

since IC Chips (integrated circuits) vary from pristine to just barely passing the functional test, that means a little "wear" (electromigration) could cause immediate failure or not be noticable degredation for years

more to the point though, the odds are greatly increased for some failure somewhere by the sheer number of IC chips throughout the computer as a whole.
some are behind buffers like the CPU and RAM which have the voltage modified by the motherboards voltage regulation modual, while other lack any buffer at all, like the drives ;)
Click to expand...


its best to test them under a real load so in place powering your computer


a rail that doesnt have a load on it will likely be fairly off
which is why you can ignore the negative rails as they arent typically employed anymore
(unless your running some antique cards)
 
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