Hi all,

My wife's PC has an A8R-MVR Athlon motherboard. The Asus Probe sfw shows that the 3.3 VDC monitor is reading 4.08 VDC. Is the output (of the power supply?) settable? Is the power supply headed west?

Thoughts? Thanks in advance,
Old Man

Some times the sensors can be off.....the best bet would be to check the power with a multi meter...

Here lies the problem.....since most devices use the 12 and 5 volt rails, its a pain to access the orange 3.3 volt wire. Some psu's have an extra AUX cable that has the 3.3 rail on it....if you can get to that you can meter it.

The one on the right has the 3.3 line....meter orange to black.


Was it at 3.3 ever? did you check what the bios says(it can lie too, but its worth a look)

Nuke,

Thanks for the reply. We'll check the bios and see if it is settable. Am not sure if it has always been that way since we only started looking after some recent (related?) problems let to a reformat.

Regards,
Old Man

Nuke and all,

We booted to the bios and it shows the 3.3 as 3.36, so your thought on the ASUS sensor being wrong may be correct. Unless, can the boot process change that (by turning on other devices)? Are we maxing the 3.3 leg of the supply?

Thanks,
Old Man

I wouldn't be worried, even the BIOS doesn't do a perfect job of voltage monitoring, and 3.36 is well within ATX specifications for voltage fluctuation if it is correct. The only real way to know the voltage is to measure it with a multi-meter, but for the 3.3v I can only think of one type of cable that would have it and be able to be measured via a multimeter, and that is the AUX connector that nukemaster posted a picture of.

pull the atx connector out, jump the power supply on with a paperclip, then you have access to any voltage you want to check with a multimeter
everything described here, including the jumping process
http://www.marnscda.com/PCWire101.htm

Your good. the 3.3volt rail is not used too much anymore anyway....i doubt you are overloading it. Just a mis calibration in the software. Speedfan shows(well used to...now it just does not show it) my 12 volt line @ 5

If you want to try something else, give CPUid's hardware monitor a go....

http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

I do not recommend leaving it on all the time as some hard drive / board configs to not like the constant polling of the hard drive's temp sensor...

Old man - No you are not maxing out the 3.3 V Rail. Voltage drops as you approach Max Current, Not increase.

As Nuke Master said the ONLY true verification is to measure the voltage with a Multimeter. This should be done under load, Not with the 20/24 pin connector disconnected.

ONLY recommend if confortable doing!
The best/safest way to to this is to remove the MB and lay it flat on a table. Connect the monitor - Do not need to connect FDD, HDD of Optical Disk. You only need to have system power on to bios.

Insert the neg lead from the Multimeter in to a Molex grn (Black).
Insert a straight Pin into the 3.3 socket where the wire goes into the plug. Power on, Measure, power off. Should be between 3.2 to 3.4 Volts. Say it measured 3.35, You then know to add/subtract the difference to reading in Bios, also if correct you know to ignore Asus probe.

ADDED - Just saw nuke's last post - Concur, You should be fine, One minor difference, the 3.3 V is primary supply for low voltage Processores.

I didn't mean current-wise. I was wondering why the bios reading was 3.3 (before boot) and the Asus Probe reading was 4.08 (after boot). But perhaps an Asus utility issue is the problem there...

Technically in some cases(rare ones) voltage will raise since higher voltage requires less current to equal the same wattage....

I am 99.99999% sure this is not the case here, but i can happen....