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what's wrong with my Antec True Power????

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LandShark

Super Shark Moderator
Joined
Aug 13, 2001
Location
Deep Blue Sea (Maryland)
ok, i'm using an Antec True Power 500W psu to power the machine that i'm building:
P4 2.4b
P4G8X
2 x 512MB PC3200LL
1 CD-RW
1 DVD-ROM
2 WD 800JB
1 RAID controller
1 Sound card
1 GeForce4 Ti4400

that's it.

and the 12v. line is as low as 11.25v(!) reported from MBM5!! isn't it should be more than enough power to power this pretty basic setup?? on the other side, when i go into the BIOS, it said 11.8x v.?!
 
any idea how?? :rolleyes: sorry, i'm not good at electric class....:p

btw, system runs stabile for 2 days straight running SETI@Home for over 48hrs now......if it does under voltage that bad, down to 11.25v in 12v. line, the system shouldn't be stable at all, right?!
 
I've got the 430 watt true power and my bios says the 12 volt rail is about 12.25. I've measured it with a dvm and it was pretty close. I would suggest you measure yours rather than going by what MBM says.
 
drewthomas14 said:
use a volt meter to measure rails. never trust program readings

use the voltmeter on the open connectors you have.
mbm5 always have different reading on my board.
asusprobe show different reading too.
and if i have both of them on, readings goes up and down like a roller coaster...
 
I get the same readings for my 12v that you are. So far MBM5 has been that amount off as the monitor software that came with my Soyo Dragon shows it at 12.01v-12.06v

I'm going with the Soyo monitor since that is what I got when I had tested mine out. I'm sure yours is running at or just over 12v. Antec TruePower is a very stable and accurate PSU and out of the last 4 I have owned and own, all of them have been dead on.
 
If it's running and stable there's no problem. MBM and even the BIOS do not always give accurate readings. Even then it's what the Motherboard is getting, not what the PSU is actually delivering (ie you lose some due to resistance etc. Check out Hoot's sticky it explains it a lot better then I ever can).

Anyway there's no reason to panic. If you notice the readings jumping all around (which is what I use MBM for BTW) then you have an issue, although you should use a multimeter to double check that as well.

AntecRep
 
I have a similar system, with a PSU that is half as big.
11.8v is still on the low side.
I am running the following on a stock Dell 250w(the Britney Spears of PSUs):
P4 2.4GHz
640MB DDR SDRAM
GeForce 4 MX 420
2x 7200RPM 60GB Western Digital HDs
PCTV Pro
48x24x48x CD-RW
50x CD-ROM
System is stable even with both CD drives going, distributed.net running(I crack RC5-72 for OCAU), and HDTV open(nothing overclocked).
Voltages(measured with a radioshack DMM):
12v: 12.06
5v: 4.99
3.3v: 3.30
BTW, I reverse engineered an old dell supply from a p133.
That dell supply used a LITEON power transformer(at first, I thought they only made CD-ROM drives).
There is only one switching transistor(well, only one big primary transistor, as there is a smaller transistor in the 5VFP supply, and several big transistors on the secondary side), but it is a high-power IGBT (20A, 900v) in a TO-3 case.
The primary caps are 680uF each, for a total of 1360uF(most PC power supplies have only 2 470uF, or 940uF total)!
 
star882 said:
I have a similar system, with a PSU that is half as big.
11.8v is still on the low side.

11.8 is within 2% (1.6 really) of 12v. I'd hardly call that on the low side. More importantly, does it fluctuate. If not, and you are stable than no worries.

P.S. The PSU in my Dell is an Allied. Hmm
 
I'd say you've good reason to be afraid... I have a 250w Allied/US-Can/Deer/Foxconn power supply sitting here that came with my first case. After a year of relatively moderate use I opened it up and beheld a circuit board scorched in places from heat. All major capacitors in the output side were badly leaking, and these were high quality Nichicon caps (not the bad ones with the faulty electrolyte). I very much doubt it has any overvoltage/short circuit protection circuitry at all.

I was lucky it didn't blow up and destroy all the components in the system, actually.
 
Re: Britney Spears ?

couchpotato said:
????

Cute ?

Waay too young ??

Vacuous ?

Tart's Handbag ??

Trying too hard ?

:eek: :eek:
I mean good and powerful(I have heard of some tech accidently connecting the floppy drive one pin off in a Dell system, lots of smoke came out of the floppy drive when the system was powered up, and the floppy drive connector melted before he could pull the plug(PSU survived)).
 
LandShark said:
tks guys. yeah, i think it's mainly due to MBM. 'cos in both BIOS & Asus Probe, it shows 11.8v.

Readouts can be iffy indeed. I have the enermax PSU in my sig and my board returns 11.37 idle in MBM5. It drops to 11.25v load too. It's stable though (hours of Prime95 tested + memtest86 + weeks of heavy use --> no errors).
 
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