GB mobo, low 12v Rail (11.3v under load!), core voltage messed up etc..

Hi,


Was wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar:

P4@ 3600, 1.7v Core (ish, see below), 170MHz FSB
GB Mobo, Asus P4G8X Deluxe
2x 256MB Twinmos 3200 at 2.5v, SPD timings.
Crucial 9700Pro v1.1 card, stock speed (since upgrade).
Enermax 430W PSU (about 2 years old)
Prometeia cooling (running off mains, no effect on voltage).

Under no load the 12v rail is 11.6 and under load it drops to 11.3v. I consider this to be rather disturbing as the same system with the Abit BE7 Raid (845PE and 1 stick of 512MB TM 3200) was getting 11.6 under load. The 5v rail is always over 5v.

With the previous 845PE mobo I was able to clock the 9700 to 380Core, 350Memory, with the GB mobo Im only getting 5% over stock speed and even that is dubious. Every now and then the display in Windows freezes, blank screens, reappears at 4BIT color and tells me "Hardware Failure, reboot". I have a niggling feeling the power supply problems are related to this.

Finally, the core voltage on this motherboard seems to fluctuate: Set to 1.7 in BIOS, boots a 1.7v, idle at around 1.7v, then when load is applied it hops to 1.82v, then floats around randomly after that between 1.69 and 1.85v!?


Any opinions these 3 (but maybe related) issues?



matt


PS: I have plugged in the ATX12v connector and forced the AGP to 4x in the BIOS!

Welcome to the forums.

How are you measuring the voltage? If you're using a software program like the BIOS or MBM5, you can't trust the accuracy of those readings. Any troubleshooting of a power supply problem needs to begin by testing the leads with a multimeter. When you know what the actual reading is for the rails you can use the software monitors to track trends, but you have to use a meter to determine the actual voltage levels first.

Any DC voltage meter or multimeter will work fine. If you're in the US Radio Shack has them starting at about $12.

Hope this can get you started.




BHD

I have a multimeter, I was planning to check this before posting, totally forgot! The readings from my original mail are from BIOS\MBM.

Ill check it later today.

thanks for the reminder,



Matt

OK, I can happily report that with the multimeter my voltages are over 12v, load and idle.

Kinda makes you rather suspicious of all the PSU reviews that only report BIOS\MBM readings doesnt it?



Matt

Makes me very suspicious of the memory, AGP and core voltages that are really coming out of the voltage regulators too.

These O/C friendly mobos need to have power test posts installed so they can be checked by hand. They should mount them right in front of whatever circuit they're feeding so we can see exactly what is going on with the board.