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Pots on Sparkle 400 question

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Tismedt

Shadow ÒÓ's after me!!!
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Location
Suisun City Ca. I love this Town
I was cleaning out the dust bunnies from my main rig and decided to open the psu and blow it out. I noticed the pots right away and have always been a bit dissapointed bt the 12v and 5v readings in MBM. So I broke out the multi meter and started to adjust to up the voltage and with a new digital meter I cant get the 12v above 11.6 because the psu shuts down. The 5v will go over 6 v. When I check the v w/ a old analog meter the 12v is at 12. So I guess my question is WTF? I tried the digital multi on 2 other psu and got readings of 11.97 on a 300w ever and 12.11 on a 400w compusa so I dont think its the multimeter. Hope this makes sense to you guys. If not ask for clearification and I'll do the best I can.

BTW I havent had any problems running my 1700 @1607 1.8vcore for the last 2 months.
 
What kind of loads are you using while adjusting the voltages? I have a PSU that won't go above 11.4V if the +5V and +3.3V aren't loaded down enough, and even with a 466 MHz Celeron it won't go above 11.8V. On one PSU, either the +5V or +12V will go way high when turned off, like +18V, if there's no load. I was told that the factory sets the voltages with heavy loads connected, and then the voltages are tested at light and full load.
 
I had zero load during testing. I suppose I could hook up several fans for a 12v load. I have a 120 and lots of 80's. As for 5v the psu is not in a case and I dont have a mobo thats not in a case to test on the bench yet. I bought a K7S5A here in the classifieds the other day and it should be here soon. I can wait until then to test with a 5v load. Thanks for the response and I'll try it with a load. I'll post back with the results.
 
I think it's a bad idea to adjust the voltages without a realistic load because voltages from a switching PSU can rise with the load, up to a point, and I once had the +5.0V exceed +5.5V, even though it wasn't supposed to go above 5.25%. The overvoltage protection circuit doesn't usually kick in until the voltage goes really high, like >6V for the +5.0V line and >4V for the +3.3V.

I don't think that a few fans will provide anything close to a realistic load, and I would rather load each output to half its rated max with jumbo resistors.
 
I'm not that knowledgeable about risistors and such. Do you know of a site that has a guide to doing this kind of adjustment? I will be using a mobo w/ a duron 1.2, 6.4 5400 hdd, gf2mx 64mg, 256 pc 2100 and a DVD-Rom (my test bench setup). Will that be a sufficient(sp) load?
 
well....... chances are if you tweak it wrond while connected you will loose something~ but all of my sparkels and my friends have ALWAYS been low on the 12v side~! like 11.91 is what i have now......
 
Thats kind of what I was thinking. I sure dont want to fry anything. It seems strange though that the 12v is 11.6 at best with a multimeter. The way I read it you think I should'nt do any adjusting while hooked to a mobo. DO you know of any other way to but a load on a psu?
 
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