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How do my rails look?

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Ad Rock

Member
Joined
Jul 13, 2003
Location
Montréal, PQ, Canada.
I have an Antec True430w psu and I just recently installed an OCZ booster and started playing with a new Barton Mobile 2500+. I have been recently getting random reboots (no blue screen, no locking just reboots) and I think it might be my PSU.

These are what my rails are at:
+5v= 4.86v
+12v= 11.73-11.67
-12v= -12.03 _ -11.95
-5v= -5.04 _ -4.99

Do these look normal to you guys? I have a 9800pro, 2 optical drives, 1 HDD, 5 fans hooked into a rheobus and the OCZ ddr booster hooked into my PS. I thought it would be able to handle this.
 
Looks a bit weak to me. I have a Hiper 550W PSU with 2HDDs, 3 opticals, two CPUs, two sticks RAM, a Ti4200 and a few PCI cards and my rails are usually 3.31/4.94/12.21 ish.

What is your 3.3v rail at? The -ve rails dont really matter. The 5v is kinda low-ish at 4.86v which may be your problem. Likewise the 12v is also kinda low.

Can you borrow another PSU to check? Also might want to test your RAM and check temps to see if they could be causing the stability issues.
 
I am almost positive its not the ram since its BH-5 running at 200 mhz with 3.3v running through it. Temps have been sticking at around 43c underload so I dont think thats the problem.

I will check my 3.3v when I get home later today.
 
I would test with memtest86 ( google search for it ) before ruling out memory errors .

Good Luck .
 
Actually, those '+' rails are well within the ATX spec. (+/- 5%)

+12v = 11.400v - 12.600v
+5v = 4.750v - 5.250v
+3.3v = 3.135 - 3.465


What are you using to measure? Don't trust software, they are unreliable.
Only way to get TRUE reading is with a MultiMeter. Once you test you
might find your rails are tighter than you thought.
 
As picky as the NF7 is with power I'd be expecting some random reboots if the +12v rail ever got down to +11.4. On the other hand, yes, don't trust what monitoring software tells you, check using a multimeter.
 
Yeah, I would have to agree. Today's systems are more demanding
than just a couple years ago. While the spec allows a 5% drop on the
+12v rail, obviously the more stable the better.

Was thinking ... that ATX spec is over four years old now is it not? Maybe
time to update.
 
as far as i know the ATX spec was changed to actually increase the +/- % to 5 from 4 on a few lines. so the current tendancy in the market is to actually have less tolerance and more variability. bad for you, good for cheapo manufacturers. and that was in 2k3 or 2k4, so its not exactly an old standard. i would just stick to buying from a reputable source.
 
Susquehannock said:
ThanX ... have known about BTX for some time.
Was thinking it was time to update the ATX specs to reflect today's
power hungry systems. Especially with later generation graphics cards
being so demanding on the +12v rail.

All you have to do is buy a good psu with adjustable rails.
 
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