power supply blues?

[sneakyfart]

i was running a Sparkle 400w PSU and was getting some low voltages on my 3.3 line 3.20, 3.18 etc but averaged 3.20. so i figured well its almost a year and half old time for a new 1, so i bought an Antec True Power 550. well now my 3.3 has dropped further and averages 3.17 accrding to mbm5 and the bios. any ideas what could be causing this?

[larrymoencurly]

Bad connections?
Inaccurate mobo voltage measurement hardware? <- MY BET

My 0.5% accurate meter disagreed with one mobo by 0.7 to 3% on some measurements, and another mobo showed 2-2.5% differences.

OTOH a friend of mine soldered the wires of one cable that had 4-5l daisy chained IDE connectors, and under a load of several amps the voltages increased a few tenths of a volt.

[BaldHeadedDork]

MBM5 is the first problem you need to eliminate. It is a good program for tracking trends but is notoriously inaccurate on measuring voltage.

Get a ten dollar voltmeter at Radio Shack and measure the power at your leads. Those are the numbers you have to go by when troubleshooting any PSU problem.


BHD

[sneakyfart]

thx for that replies ill will pick up a volt meter check it out thz again...

[WyrmMaster]

Originally posted by BaldHeadedDork
MBM5 is the first problem you need to eliminate. It is a good program for tracking trends but is notoriously inaccurate on measuring voltage.

Get a ten dollar voltmeter at Radio Shack and measure the power at your leads. Those are the numbers you have to go by when troubleshooting any PSU problem.


BHD

Theres nothing wrong with MBM5, it simple says what the mobo tells it. The mobo sensor can be wrong though. Some mobos also simply use more off of a certain voltage (my 8K7A for example hits the 5v VERY hard, displays about 4.75, but works perfectly). I agree however that for measuring power supply performance get a multimeter.