How High Or Low Can Your Voltages Be?

[Storm]

ive been looking at my temps and voltages for a week or so now, and my temps are fine (CPU stays at 36, but thats prolly since i dont play any games and such, besides, my whole case is overcooled, running 4 fans when i only need 1 )

but the thing is, my 12v voltage line keeps showing up @ around 12.416....... kinda steady on that......

now i know thats not a major diferance, and my fans will definity not be harmed by it, but what about my mobo? if its dangerous or damaging, what do i do about it?

or am i just freaking out?

[angel_of_death57]

my +12V is around 12.59V and i have my intake and exhaust fan with 2 optical driversand my hard drive and normal things all on a 300W PSU but i am getting a new PSU seen a 450W or somthing.

What PSU you got.

[Storm]

300W standard PSU that came with my AOpen H600B case

oh, btw, im monitoring everything with AsusProbe 2 (came with my mobo)

[clocker]

You need to take a reading with a digital multimeter to know what your voltages really are.

[Storm]

hmmmmzzz, that sounds like a lot of work (since i dont have one)

so........... what are the chances of my voltages being off that much that it can cause harm to my system?

[angel_of_death57]

Well like i said mine is 12.59 and no damage to my system i use Speedfan

[clocker]

Originally posted by Storm@14 July 2004 - 07:46
hmmmmzzz, that sounds like a lot of work (since i dont have one)

How much energy have you put into monitoring/worrying about your voltages already? You could easily allay your fears by begging/borrowing ( or, as a last resort, buying) a multimeter.

I doubt that your PSU will hurt your system as it sits right now.
Random reboots or BSODs would be one indication that something is wrong, but not necessarily caused by your PSU.

[Spicker]

mine says 11.73 is that good or bad? :helpsmile:

[Storm]

Originally posted by clocker+14 July 2004 - 16:04--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (clocker @ 14 July 2004 - 16:04)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Originally posted by Storm@14 July 2004 - 07:46
hmmmmzzz, that sounds like a lot of work (since i dont have one)

How much energy have you put into monitoring/worrying about your voltages already? You could easily allay your fears by begging/borrowing ( or, as a last resort, buying) a multimeter.

I doubt that your PSU will hurt your system as it sits right now.
Random reboots or BSODs would be one indication that something is wrong, but not necessarily caused by your PSU. [/b]

well im not having any problems now........ and i havent put that much time in monitoring it..........

just looked at the nice graphs every now and then

thnx for the answer......


<!--QuoteBegin-jaigandhi5@14 July 2004 - 16:06
mine says 11.73 is that good or bad?&nbsp; :helpsmile:&nbsp; [/quote]
2 low might only cause your system to lose power, or things to work a lil slower....... it will just be underpowerd....... no chance of damaging the system (though you might get some other failures)

but the youre not that much under what it needs, and it will prolly run just fine (seeing as you can run diskmans and such @ half their required voltage rate )

to high voltages however can cause damage (though i have no idea of what whould be "to" in this case )

[lynx]

Voltages shown by Speedfan, MBM5, Asusprobe etc are notoriously inaccurate. The sensor chip only uses an 8 bit A/D converter. Best accuracy with a high quality device us usually 0.5 LSB. In other words 1/512 of full scale. But the A/D used on motherboards are very cheap low quality devices, probably with an accuracy of about 2 LSB, or 1/128 of full scale, about 0.1V over 12V.

This is then relative to a reference voltage also determined from a very cheap device, and can ofter be 2% inaccurate or worse, about 0.25V over 12V. You can see that a reading can easily be out by 3% or more.

As has been said before, measure the voltages with a digital multimeter to get a base reading and find out how accurate your onboard sensor readings actually are. If you then change the system configuration (excluding the mobo) you can quickly work out whether you&#39;ve got potentially damaging voltages.

Btw, low voltages are not necessarily safe for your system. They can be a sign that you are trying to draw too much power from the psu. If the psu is under strain in this way, an otherwise relatively harmless voltage spike could blow through the protection circuits in your psu, sometimes dramatically damaging many of your system components.