enermax psu

hi, folks, currently trying to troubleshoot a problem i'm having. i have an enermax whisper psu, model number eg465p-ve. it's a few years old now, and under load my voltages seem pretty low. the 5.5v line is dropping to around 4.81, the 12v is about 12.46, the 3.3 is around 3.25 while i'm running prime95. could this be causing instablity with my memory and/or video card? i can run memtest x86 all day long with no problems, but when i get into windows and start stressing it (running prime95 and looping 3dmark2001 at the same time) first 3dmark crashes to desktop and then prime95 comes up with an error. i have a radeon 9800 pro with the extra power cord, i'm just wondering if it runs off the 5v line, or 3.3, or what, and also what line the memory runs off of. my system specs are in my sig, but i have 3 sticks of kingston ram that i'm trying to get to run stably in my computer, without much luck. i can get them all in if i put them in specific slots and have it loop memtest just fine, but once i get it into windows and try running games or stressing it like i said above the games will ctd. anyway, just wanted to know if anyone thought the psu might be the culprit, since i don't have a spare to check with and i didn't want to go buy one just on a hunch.

edit cuz for some reason i can't have a sig: athlon xp2000+, shuttle ak35 gt-r rev.2, bb ati radeon 9800 pro, 2x 512mb kingston pc2700, 1x 256mb kingston pc4000, 120gb maxtor, 60gb ibm, 40gb seagate, hercules fortissimo 2, buncha fans

Not sure about that mobo's power consumption, but the 98P and the cpu feed off the +5v line. On certain boards the ram feeds off the +3.3v line. The rest of the parts ie: Hdd's, roms, fans feed off the +12v line.

To rule out the psu, check the rails with a digital multi meter. Radio shack sells them for about 10-12 bux. Bios and temp reading programs aren't accurate. The program reads off the same sensors the bios reads off.

Have you added any new hardware?

yeah, the video card and the ram, hehe. i had two of the 256mb pc4000 sticks and some of the ram on my gf's puter went kaputt, so, being the gentleman i am, i immediately ordered a gig of ram (the two 512 pc2700 sticks) from newegg and put those in my puter and took one of the 256mb sticks and put it in hers. after that i started getting random reboots and my games started crashing, so i thought it was a problem with the memory. i used memtest x86 and tested all the sticks individually, and one of them was bad, so i got a replacement from newegg. i kept getting game crashes with the new ram, also, so i tested all the sticks again (with memtest) and they all passed fine (about a days worth of testing per stick with no errors). i then started testing multiple sticks together and started getting errors. i remembered someone saying a while back that the motherboard i have doesn't necessarily like all the ram in the first few slots all the time, so i switched and tested until i came up with this: 256mb-nothing-512mb-512mb in the 4 mem slots. that tested fine and stable with memtest. i have all the mem settings set to the default settings, btw. once i get into windows, though, i get the problems that i was talking about, like prime95 erroring out, 3dmark crashing to desktop, and games being unstable and crashing, also. it doesn't seem like it should be a memory problem to me, since it's stable when i run memtest. i was just thinking that maybe the ps is just not as strong as it used to be, for some reason, and that maybe the memory was technically okay, but it just can't get the voltage it needs with all those sticks in there while it's being stressed.

anyway, i'm just confused and trying to figure out whether it's my mobo, ps, memory, or what causing this . . .

and the problem didn't seem to get any better or any worse when i went from a geforce 4 ti4200 to my 9800pro. for all i know it could be windows that can't handle all the memory, hehe. just kind of at my wit's end here, so thanks for the input . . .

Hmmm, Ok, just use 2 sticks of PC2700 you have in the pc only. Try that and see what happens. Post your results. We're gonna narrow this down.

okies, will do, i'll post again when i get those tests run, thanks again

okies, finally seeing a pattern here, hehe . . . it looks like my system just doesn't like one of my sticks of pc2700. it tests fine in memtest86, but once i get into windows and run prime95 it errors out within minutes, regardless of which memory slot it's in. the ram in question is a stick of 512mb kingston valueram, kvr333x64c25/512, and the code on the memory is kingston d3208dw1r-6. you seem to know a lot about memory, nebulous, have you heard of memory actually being good, just not being compatible with a certain mobo or chipset, or something?

Yeah, plenty of times. it's happened to me several times with Geil, corsair and samsung. It's like that will all hardware. Some parts don't play well with other parts for no reason. I can't say for sure what causes it, but it's a brainbuster for sure, lol.

Maybe you can RMA that ram module. Hopefully the replacement will give you better results with zero problems. I'm glad i was able to help you out

Good luck with the rma.