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Voltage..what?
- Thread starter rickys
- Start date
twajetmech
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2004
- Messages
- 298
Simple...if your 12v rail is reading 12.34V then its fine...allbit a tad high, the 5v rail is reading 5.03v....great.....what is the 3v rail reading ? The whole idea is to make sure that at idle and at load you can monitor the voltages to make sure they don't fluctuate more than say 10%....otherwise you'll have instability.
Ice Czar
Inscrutable
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2001
- Messages
- 27,174
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
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