+12V shows as 11.09V in Speedfan

I wonder if this is something or nothing.:confused I have a one year old Antec Earthwatts 500W running 24/7 powering my rig:

ASUS P5Q-Pro
Q6600 @ stock speed running almost pinned(folding on all 4 cores)
4 GB RAM
2X 9800GT Oc'd to 1800 shaders
3 SATA HDDs plus 4 fans

With all my other machines, the most they were off was 0.30V I do know that this PSU is most likely near the edge and will be replaced early next year. Main question is, am I playing with fire here with those volts? Is it impending doom? Other proggies to check? I do have a DMM but that won't show me loads under use. Thanks as always folks.

 

Unless I'm reading this wrong, that may be normal:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/18/antec_earthwatts_750w_psu_review/4

I'm still waiting on my PSU upgrade:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/25/seasonic_x_series_x750_power_supply_review/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087

80 plus gold rating. Yummy!

 

Well, I turned everything off and it went up 0.2V, still too low. I have to crosscheck this in BIOS now, why didn't I think of this before?:confused

 

OK, BIOS showed 11.93V as did PCProbe II with nothing running. With everything loaded up to the hilt as usual, it never goes below 11.7V My Antec is also an 80 Plus but not Gold. The 750W you linked to didn't even start breathing hard under a heavy load. :-D:drool

Anyways, I'm going to try and find another monitoring app just to make me feel better. I sure as heck ain't gonna skimp on the PSU with my i7 build, X58 w/6GB triple channel RAM and three PCI-E slots. My GTX260-216 will be transplanted there and when I can afford them, another 2 GPUs. That should last me until the next big bump in tech in two years or so.:cool

 

OK, back on topic. Here's my tests with various apps.

APP noload GPUonly fullload

BIOS 11.93 N/A N/A
PCProbe II 11.93 11.82 11.70
SpeedFan 11.24 11.09 11.04
CPUID 11.88 11.71 11.65

Hmm, and I've seen many folks say that PCProbe is crap and to use SpeedFan. That ain't gonna happen, not with this board at any rate. The fullload #'s were the lowest recorded in each case, they bounced around a bit of course. Ignoring SpeedFan, then the variance is only %3 which is perfectly acceptable. I got all flustered for nothing.

Meh, can't seem to format this properly. Ya'll get the gist eh?

 

Hi,

Not sure what tolerances are today but even at +/- 5% you are good.

Good Luck, Jim

 

Ya, I would have taken %5 with no worries but this was %8.5 off, that's why I did the testing. Buh-bye SpeedFan. Oh, now I remember why I hated PCProbe, forgot to turn my speakers off and got the shock of the alarm going off!:-D

 

Hi again Augie,

My memory is going and I can't find a ref. The + (and -) 12v was originally for the Serial Ports and then to run drive motors. I'm almost certain that it was and probably still is +/- 10%. Maybe I'll find it soon and will let you know.

Jim