Need your help, it's been a while :)

Long story short, I had a FSP Group Everest 800w supply that died 3 days after the warranty expired. It was powering a moderate system, phenomII 955BE, stock cooler, HD6850, and a single Green TB hard disk. So yeah, I'm outta luck there. I recently bough a brand new system, early adopter sort of thing that left me completely broke, and this PC here (the phenom and 6850) is going into my recording studio to replace an old P4 northwood. I am also going to let my friends use their grubby hands to play BF3, ME3, GtaIV etc, which this system did "phenom"menally well mind you.

The only 24pin ATX power supply I have laying around that still works is an old 500w Asus. I got it for free in an old Asus case, and quite frankly the build quality and <7 years it's been in action has a significant impact on my opinion of the brand, a brand that was blasted and had it's hair pulled by many internet tough guys. Anyway. It's been years since I posted, (2008 was my last post) and I already have a frankensteined rosewill PSU ready to go dual-psu to power some of the other components I need in this PC (it is my recording studio PC, so it has XP on it temporarily, and this PC will be something I use every single night)

My readings don't differ much between speedfan and HWmonitor. So here they are:

vc1 : 1.31
vc2 : 1.60
+3.3 : 3.38
+5 : 5.03
+12 : 12.03

-12 : -3.39
-5 : -2.04
+5 : 3.60

Being daft and behind in my expertise, I need you're help to ascertain whether or not i can / should rock this thing until I can afford a new PSU? Again it is not my main gaming system. Am I going to be recording something sweet and the poor Asus PSU is going to catch fire and/or die a silent click-off death? I haven't used XP in a while, and the old thermaltake X-Blower i have tacked on the stock phenom heatsink seems to be fluxuating pretty badly, but when it spins up it REALLY spins up, if anyone remembers these things, they are close to the old Tornados that would put you in the hospital or leave your cat without a face should either of you come within 5 feet of the blades.

Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate you all and in other sections I have a lot to post about my various pc antics over the last few years.

Thanks guys I really appreciate you all

is that asus psu an OEM one? if yes then dont use it yet until you have a good quality PSU.. i would suggest seasonic, corsair, thermaltake or antec... these are good brands for a psu.. you need about atleast 400w psu to power up that system. go for a 500w to have an extra headroom for future upgrades/overclocks..

camus said:

(blablabla)

My readings don't differ much between speedfan and HWmonitor. So here they are:

vc1 : 1.31
vc2 : 1.60
+3.3 : 3.38
+5 : 5.03
+12 : 12.03

-12 : -3.39
-5 : -2.04
+5 : 3.60

(blablabla)

Click to expand...

You sure those are the -12V and -5V rail?

That's a little bit out of spec.

HWMonitor sucks at reading voltages and is not to be trusted.
Speedfan even less so.

Bobnova said:

HWMonitor sucks at reading voltages and is not to be trusted.
Speedfan even less so.

Click to expand...

Thaaaat's right. My brain trolled me, again. I thought he said his readings didn't differ too much between SpeedFan and a DMM.]

Get a DMM and check those voltages by yourself.

my experience with hwmonitor has been a terrible one. dont trust it with voltages, always trust your bios

raident30 said:

my experience with hwmonitor has been a terrible one. dont trust it with voltages, always trust your bios

Click to expand...

Well, my BIOS was neither as accurate as a DMM. So for me, it would be, always trust your DMM.

The BIOS reads the correct registers so it has a better chance than HWBot, but you're still stuck with the dubious quality of the onboard voltage sensors.

txus.palacios said:

Well, my BIOS was neither as accurate as a DMM. So for me, it would be, always trust your DMM.

Click to expand...

if you dont mind me asking, what's DMM?

Bobnova said:

The BIOS reads the correct registers so it has a better chance than HWBot, but you're still stuck with the dubious quality of the onboard voltage sensors.

Click to expand...

why is that? i think my bios reading is pretty accurate

DMM = Digital MultiMeter. It'll measure voltage and resistance and generally amps, sometimes quite a bit more.

Some motherboards (it's individual to the board itself, not just the model) have better built in sensors than others. My P5Q Pro for instance read the 12v 0.15v lower than reality consistently, while reading the 5v about the same amount higher than reality.

but then if all else fail, i think we all really need to look at and trust the bios for voltage reading

Why not just go with a decent PSU. Silverstone Stiders are inexpensive and good quality. The Corsair CX seriesare are a good budget line, as are the cheaper Antec models.

Ok folks, I truly appreciate the replies. I have been messing around with the FSP psu a little bit. It is now powering my PC with the specs listed above, the 955BE and 6850 system, blah blah... To reiterate it is a FSP Group Everest 800w.

In the bios, and using software as I am broke and cannot afford a new PSU let alone a DMM, my -12v rail always seems to be dipping around -3-5v. Here is the catch:

The PSU makes very tiny clicks when I first push the power button, and takes anywhere from 5-10 minutes to power on. I went in the bios and enabled every single option for powering on by alternative sources other than the power switch, like keyboard, mouse, and even the physical PSU switch itself. So, again being daft, what is wrong with it? The clicks it makes are almost inaudible and I have to hold my ear against the case itself to hear them. After waiting 5-10 minutes the system powers on, and as I'm dual booting Windows 7 and XP sp3, randomly swapping around different sata optical and hard disk drives, the thing shows me absolutely NO performance or stability issues that I have encountered in the past with other failing PSU.

THAT being said, the motherboard that is running this system, a gigabyte 880GMA with two 12v rails, is the one that seems to be having issues. This is because on an old Asus A8N-VM micro atx system with only ONE 12v rail, the PSU has no trouble starting up immediately. So I guess I've narrowed it down to at least the "CPU-2" labeled 12v cable or something like that... I really don't know much about it, my apologies.

Like I said, I'm gonna keep using it, despite the annoying wait it takes to power on. Just let me know if it's destined to burst into flames or something... and if you can, any information about failing PSU's that click and seem to need a gratuitous "warm up" period before they function.

For a little bit of backstory, this all initially started when I bought my new i5 system, and this one here I started to believe the power switch on my case itself was going out. I would have to jam on it, click the thing hundreds of times before it would power on, but then I started gutting old cases and trying other switches to get the same result. The PSU has been in a smoke free, dust free environment for the 13 months that I've owned it. It has a sister, the 700w everest, running in a PC that I built for a friend 3 years ago, and that one is still running perfectly.

It's playing games like BF3, SaintsRow3, and being my new recording studio PC, running Cool Edit Pro 2.0, Cubase LE 5. Stuff that in my opinion would cripple a failing PSU, at least in the stability department. I've had no crashes, but the system IS all at freshie bios settings anyway.

Thanks for reading the wall, appreciate any and all replies

Do you have a spare PSU lying around that you can test with?