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Odd readings from HWMonitor

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I was running some periodic tests on my system and found something rather odd with my voltage readings...
My +5v is showing 3.24v (current) and +12v is showing 4.58v (current). I've included an ss of HWMonitor so as to give as specific details as possible.

My main question is, is this reading wrong, or is it entirely possible for my system to run fine* with such variance in my power output?

*The system was running perfectly fine when I had win7 x64 installed. No crashes, hangs, etc. I recently (last week) installed win7 x86 to see if there was a difference in performance. Ever since switching to x86, I get random gpu driver crashes. I've tried installing the latest ati drivers as well as each released version all the way back to 10.2, but all have the same result. The crashes happen at random, though only while gaming, and aren't heat related (confirmed). The entire system does not crash, only the display drivers. I am however forced to do a normal reboot when this happens.

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Power supply Master

AMD motherboard sometimes have problems reading the voltage. I just built an Athlon II x3 system for somebody and I saw the same thing when I opened up HWMonitior. It must be a software bug with some motherboards the board I was using was an AsRock motherboard.

I had went into the system and checked all voltage with a good multimeter and all voltage checked out perfect. Really if those readings were true your system would not even boot up so I wouldn't worry about it. If you are really concerned you can check with a multimeter to make sure but I am willing to guarantee all your voltages are fine.


I don't think the motherboard is to blame. I have the same wierd readings in my system, and I've got a gigabyte x58 board. My 12v reading sais negative 3v though, but that just proves the readings to be wrong. I'm guessing it's either the hardware monitor that has incorrect offsets, or the driver just doesn't work properly in windows 7.

There are limits in the atx specifications for how high or low the power level is permitted to be on each voltage level.

The actual limits are 5% variation in either direction for all power levels except the negative ones. They are permitted to vary 10%. And under peak load, the +12V rails are permitted up to 10% variation as well.
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