Help with PSU voltage output

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M6A

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Jul 10, 2014
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Good day. Reposting here.

My Seasonic P520 Fanless is 1.5 years old. It is showing 3.18v in BIOS. The other voltages are at 5.04v and 12.09v. Sometimes the hard drive crashes and the pc hangs. There are no problems with the hard drives, memory modules, and os. The pc is used mostly for web browsing.

Given the voltage reading, is the PSU a candidate for RMA process?

Thanks for helping.
 
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Dark Lord of Tech
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M

M6A

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Jul 10, 2014
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Thank you very much clutchc and Saberus!

Yes. My concern is the 3.18v readout. It seems low and is very near the +/-5% threshold. I'm just wondering if it's the one causing the occasional hard drive crashes. I've tested the hard drive several times with DOS SeaTools. There are no errors. There are also no errors with chkdsk.

The PSU is very clean and well ventilated.
 
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M

M6A

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Jul 10, 2014
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Thanks SR-71. Very concise.

Saberus, I've read somewhere that the 3.3v is also responsible for the hard drive controller chip on the motherboard and the logic board on the hard drive, that is why I was concerned about the readout. Thanks for helping out.
 
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M

M6A

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Jul 10, 2014
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This may help others with the same problem.

After three months, I finally solved the problem by unplugging and reconnecting the modular cables on the PSU side. Might have been an issue of increased resistance. Although, I clean the PSU regularly, I do not remove the plugs on the PSU side to prevent the contact points from becoming too loose due to frequent unplugging / replugging cycle.

The 3.3v eventually went south, slowly every few days, to 2.9v before I hit on the idea of doing the above. At this point the PC was just rebooting randomly. No BSOD or any errors, just shut off and restart. I almost opened a ticket for RMA and started documenting.
 
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clutchc

clutchc

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Yes, we often forget of the added impedance that modular cables can add especially when dealing with low voltage circuits. Although the added resistance should be negligible, and there usually isn't a problem with loose connections. Good job of problem solving though.
 
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M

M6A

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Jul 10, 2014
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Addendum. After a while, the problems came back, so I finally decided to RMA the PSU in April. It was indeed defective. Seasonic replaced the PSU with a higher wattage P660.

It has been almost a year now, and the new one is flawless and very stable.

Thanks clutchc for helping out and sharing your ideas.
 
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