voltages

[nova15]

What are the potential dangers of a power supply distributing too little voltage? My +12V often dips below 11V. Is this bad? If so, why does it happen, and does it have anything to do with having too many devices for my power supply to handle?

 

[BunnyStroker]

The "danger" of low voltages is that your system will crash. It won't hurt the hardware, but system stability will suffer.

11V on your +12V is definitely a problem. I would be surprised if it isn't causing you system trouble.

A low-quality power supply <b>or</b> one that is undersized could definitely be causing this. Post your system hardware specs, including PS, and maybe someone can tell you if your PS should be able to handle it.

<b>1.4 Ghz AMD T-Bird underclocked to 1 Ghz...just to be safe!</b>

 

[nova15]

Shuttle AN35N Ultra 400 (nForce2)
1 GHz Athlon
512KB DDR SDRAM (running at 2.7V, 266MHz)
IDE1: 160GB ATA133 Maxtor hard drive
IDE2: DVD-rom & CD-writer
GeForce2 MX

300W power supply
fluctuations, observed with MBM over several minutes with varying cpu usage:
Core 0 -> [1.76, 1.82]
Core 1 -> 1.52
+3.3 -> [3.29, 3.31]
+5 -> [5.00, 5.13]
+12 -> [10.62, 12.01]
-12 -> about [-12.8, -13.2]
-5 -> about [-3.4, -3.6]

 

[HammerBot]

Those negative voltages are waay off. I think you have a misreading. What program do you use to get those? Have you verified them with what the BIOS displays?

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[nova15]

Yeah, I noticed that the negative readings are probably off, but I'm not really concerned about those. I know my +12V reading is correct, and that one worries me. Do you know what happens if it gets too low?

 

[Crashman]

If it gets too low your system crashes.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[jgutz20]

yea... my shuttle resets itself also, maybe they should ship with bigger power supplies?

 

[nova15]

350W did the trick... no more problems now

 

[jammydodger]

I thought the negative voltages wernt used anymore?

[Insert witty comment here]