I'm investigating possible PSU issues, and was told to investigate what the +/- values on the rails were. However, no monitoring program (OCCT, HWmonitor, CPUid, Speccy) displays the values, only this: [url]http://imgur.com/X1iBTON[/url] .
Is this normal, or is it indicative of some kind of fault or problem?
The problem is, in short, my GPU appears to die (Power problems?) when under heavy load at times, and the GPU itself, according to manufacturer examination, is fine, so amongst other things, I'm narrowing it down towards to PSU.
what brand is your PSU?
The PSU is a Corsair CX 600W. I recently learned the CX series has capacitors not up to the regular standard of corsair, which drew me toward the possibility of PSU problems.
And now I've only just realised that it has a single 12v rail according to the product description. Did I screw up when my computer consists of these specs?
[url]http://imgur.com/UNolr5l[/url]
single rails are better than multiple rails.
maybe take a look in your Bios?
i believe it should have accurate readings there
Aye, values are
3.3v +3.344v
5v +5.120v
12v +12.192v
Wonder if these values change or skew when I experience problems (When playing an intensive game) or if a capacitor or something is to blame. Seeing as how I cannot check the values in the Bios whilst playing a game, I cannot say myself.
PSU voltages are difficult to tell, and it's not just the voltages that matter. Although the CX has some issues with capacitors, it's moreso an issue with the higher wattage models.
[QUOTE=Hogie bear;44952587]Aye, values are
3.3v +3.344v
5v +5.120v
12v +12.192v
Wonder if these values change or skew when I experience problems (When playing an intensive game) or if a capacitor or something is to blame. Seeing as how I cannot check the values in the Bios whilst playing a game, I cannot say myself.[/QUOTE]
Just knowing the voltage of the rails while the PSU is loaded is only half of the picture. Your voltage could be fine, but the ripple current could be way out of spec and you wouldn't know it unless you had an oscilloscope. Bad capacitors cause high ripple current, but can show a mostly normal voltage in some cases, so you need an oscilloscope and the knowledge to use it correctly if you want to properly test a PSU.
And you can't rely on software voltage monitoring regardless, HWMonitor and Speedfan often read unknown sensors that aren't related to voltage and motherboard voltage sensors are known to have bad reading tolerances of +/-10% or worse. The best way to get a correct voltage reading is to have one voltmeter for each voltage rail (+12v, +5v, +3.3v and -12v) and leave them connected to the rails while the computer is running various loads.
All positive rails should be within +/-5% of their rated voltage and all negative rails can be up to +/-10% of their rated voltage.
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