TX750(UK) Voltage worries

Hi guys, i have some concerns with my psu, i'll try to describe everything as clearly as i can, thanks for reading!

 

Ok so i have had my psu since september 10th last year, i've had the same hardware setup powered by it since then too. for the first 6 months the +12 reading in CPUID HWmonitor showed it was at 12.22, when i loaded the system with a modern game, or a benchmark tool such as 3Dmark Vantage, that would drop down to 12.16 and would remain there til i put the system back into an idle state, but then once the first 6 months had passed i noticed that the +12 reading was at 12.16 at idle, and when i loaded the system it would drop down to 12.10 and sometimes 12.03(it's not shown 12.22 at all since), i know this is fine, its within the normal specs for voltage rails, but lastnight i noticed it had gotten even lower, at idle it now fluctuates between 12.16 and 12.10 every few seconds, and when i load the system it goes down to 11.97, i know, it's still within the specs for voltage rails, just.. but i started to watch the +5v, i loaded the system and saw it drop to 4.95, and today i decided i would run 3Dmark11 and the +5v showed at 4.92 during the benchmark, as far as i know that's out of spec, and the +12v went down to 11.97.. there is a difference between what hwmonitor shows the +12 at when compared with the bios readings, the bios shows it at 11.992 and it fluctuates between that and 11.885 or something similar, i don't have access to a multimeter to check this out on something other than a motherboard sensor, and i have had one or two games freeze on me recently, but this has not occurred more than twice.. what should i do? if i rma my psu i would be without a computer for however long it takes for it to get to corsair and back(not including the 5 days corsair actually have the psu in for testing etc).

 

Thanks again for reading, feel free to ask me for any further info that i've not posted here :sunglasse

 

Natalie

It's hard to say what, if anything, is happening to your PS. Slight voltage variations are normal for any PS, and the load on it makes a difference too. If you haven't done all of the following, perform these things and see what your voltage readings are.

 

Shutdown the PC, unplug the power from the wall. Remove and re-insert the AC power cable from the PS a few times to remove any potential corrosion that may have occurred. Confirm the AC power cord has a firm attachment to the PS and the AC power plug. If you're using extension cords or power strips, make sure they are in good condition, and unplug and plug them in a few times to insure a clean connection. Cycle the switch on power strips for the same reason. Or try things without the power strips, or with a different one.

 

Open the PC case, and disconnect the cables from the PS to the mother board and other components, one at a time if you'll get confused about what goes where. Again, disconnect and reconnect the connectors a few times to insure a good, clean connection. Make sure all the connectors are fully seated and that the locking latches are in place. If you are using extension cables, do the same thing to them, and perhaps try to remove them and connect power without them.

 

Remove and reinsert and cards from the mother board, video card, etc, again for a fresh connection. If you have any questionable components, like old HDDs, try running the PC without them and see if it makes a difference.

 

If you have many fans connected to the mother board, with splitter cables for example, change that as any mother board can only supply so much power to fans, not more than one amp per fan header.

 

If all this makes no difference, then your PS might be having an issue. Does the PS's fan run sometimes, or does the PS feel very warm?

Hey parsec, thanks for the informative response :)

 

i already went through most of what you've suggested lastnight, i even went as far as changing one pci express power cable out for another on my video card, i'll go do the other things you suggested though, and i would imagine the two game lock ups i've had are probably not related to the power supply, since i've had no other issues that would point towards under powering of components etc, the machine turns on straight away even if it's been disconnected from the mains, i do have the machine connected to a 4 bar extension, so i'll also try connecting it to a wall socket on its own so it is isolated away from anything else, it is worth noting that my machine has been rock solid from day one of building it :)

 

p.s the only thing i have connected to the motherboard fan wise is the pump for my H70, the two Gentle typhoon fans i have connected in push/pull are connected directly to the psu via molex adaptors, i did have one of the fans connected to the motherboard but i was getting a buzzing noise from it, that noise stopped when i swapped it over to the psu, which i found kind of odd, maybe the voltage circuitry on my motherboard is acting up and also giving me lower readings on my psu than the psu is actually putting out? can you suggest any cheap multimeters i can get in the uk to test the +5 and +12 outputs with, oh and how exactly i would go about testing them, as i've never actually done it before :) sorry for the wall of text, i'm just worried about my baby lol

You would have to check local vendors near you for prices. You can find them real cheap if you look at bargain stores or hardware stores. I picked one up a few weeks ago for 15$ US.

All you need to do to test them is find out which wires in the bundle are the 5 and 12v ones and a ground wire.which will be any balck wire.

Set the meter to read volts and not amps or ohms.

Then you touch the black probe to the black wire and the red probe to the appropriate hot wire. Both of them at the connector where the wire and the pin meet

I'll see if i can dig up pin outs for your PSU and that will tell you exactly which wires you need to use.

 

If you are not running into stability problems or crashes i really doubt that your PSU is faulty.

 

FWIW my psu reads 11.7 and 4.6 in my BIOS but when tested with a voltmeter they are really way above what is being read by the BIOS.

 

I have to run out , but should be back in an hour or so. I'll try to dig up that info for you unless someone beats me to it.:)

well applying a small amount of logic i already deduced that on a 4 pin molex the 12 volt is yellow and the red is 5, i worked that out thanks to paying attention to which wires from the fans i have run through to the yellow wire on the 4 pin molex, the fans are 12volt fans so i used my head :) so basically i would put the red probe onto the yellow and the black onto the black and that would give me my 12v rail output? do i do this when the pc is on, testing it idle and at load? obviously repeating that for the 5v rail :) also would this multimeter be ok?

 

link

You got it! It may also be a good idea to check them at the 24 pin connector as well. But the molex should give you a pretty good idea where you stand . I suggest the 24 ppin, 12vATX and also the video card connections as well because i believe your PSU has more than one 12v rail? If it only has one then the molex only should be just fine.

 

And yes, that meter would work just fine as well. Even if all you use it for is to check your voltages once in awhile it will be well worth the money. Just remember you have 5% varience either up or down on your voltages.

 

If you need help setting the meter correctly, just post back. I think between Parsec and i we should be able to walk you through it.

 

Good luck and let us know how you make out. :)

Well you're memory has let you down slightly, this psu only has one 12v rail, it was one of the reasons i bought it, another being the 650TX i had in an older build was flawless the entire time i had it :)

 

i'll go get myself that meter probably on monday now, unless i can coax a lift tomorrow to the store where it's sold ofcourse :P I'll keep you guys updated, thank you for all the help so far, hopefully my psu isn't starting to have issues that can cause problems later on down the road, corsair are normally top notch, which is why i've stuck with them for my ram, psu, and now my cpu cooler :)

ok so although i've not tested with a multi meter as of yet, everything in my machine checks out and the voltage rails kept on displaying the same thing regardless of which wall socket i used on the machine too, but i'm posting back because i'm now a little freaked out, i was playing left 4 dead 2 for the past few hours, and i had hwmonitor running in the background the entire time, when i came out of the game around 15 minutes ago, the lowest reading for the +5v was 4.89v, even without using a multi meter wouldnt this mean that something is degrading and quickly? i'm seriously worried now, and i think if i get chance tomorrow i'll be going to maplin to buy that multimeter to confirm things, if it shows the same or worse, then i have no choice but to rma the psu.. i can't afford to do that until a week this thursday either, i don't have the money to cover the shipping costs, and i certainly don't have the money for the advance rma either, as i'm sure it'd cost more to do an advance rma than it would cost for shipping my psu out, i don't trust my machine right now, i'm not going to play any more games on it until this is worked out :(

sorry for spamming the thread with posts, but i have an update..

 

first of all, would windows shutting itself down be a sign of a bad psu? i literally mean shutting itself down too, not a sudden power off, but it logging me out of windows and going through the shut down process, the reason i ask is because i decided to do some more testing, i downloaded myself a copy of the latest stable release of furmark, i ran a benchmark in windowed mode, and had hwmonitor on so i could see exactly what was going on, the video card was obviously getting stressed more than a game would stress it out, the +5 was reading at 4.92, and the +12 was reading at 11.97, then suddenly i get the windows shut down screen, i waited a minute before powering back up, and here i am! i just tried to get into the event viewer and at this moment in time i can't, it says the service for it isn't started, going to do a reboot now to see if i can get it back up..

 

well the reboot didn't help, i can't get into my event viewer, i'm going to need to spend the day tomorrow messing with my machine i guess.. i'll start with the power supply, the last thing i didnt try yet was to flip the psu over so the fan is facing upwards, i was told by several people to have it fan facing down(my case has a vent on the bottom of the case for having it facing this way) but its gone downhill since doing that, i had it fan facing up for the first 35 months of having it, so that's one last thing i can try.. thanks again for reading, really want to get this sorted out asap!

voltages are still perfectly fine.

boot to a live linux/windows CD and see if the problem still happens.

voltages are still perfectly fine.

boot to a live linux/windows CD and see if the problem still happens.

 

i'll clear out some space on my second hdd tomorrow and make a new partition to do a test install of windows 7 onto it, the fact my event viewer suddenly borked out on me suggests os problems, thanks though :)

sorry for spamming the thread with posts, but i have an update..

 

first of all, would windows shutting itself down be a sign of a bad psu?...

 

the last thing i didnt try yet was to flip the psu over so the fan is facing upwards, i was told by several people to have it fan facing down(my case has a vent on the bottom of the case for having it facing this way) but its gone downhill since doing that, i had it fan facing up for the first 35 months of having it, so that's one last thing i can try.. thanks again for reading, really want to get this sorted out asap!

 

OMGosh, no no, the PS "upside down" thing is meaningless. Electronic components have no orientation of up or down, it they did we'd really be in trouble. All my PC's PS are "upside down", I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

But having said that, something may have happened when you turned it over. Meaning physical damage, but that is unlikely. Was anything else done at that time? You had to unplug and reconnect your PS cables to do that, did they get twisted or stressed?

 

Hmm, I wonder, when flipping the PS, the stresses on the circuit boards, etc, could change from heavy components being pulled by gravity in the other direction. If that did cause an issue, that is still a manufacturing problem that should not happen.

 

Do the volt meter tests and see what happens. Do you know how to start the PS when it is not connected to the PC, or did you have another method in mind?

Hmm, I wonder, when flipping the PS, the stresses on the circuit boards, etc, could change from heavy components being pulled by gravity in the other direction. If that did cause an issue, that is still a manufacturing problem that should not happen.

If that indeed was the case i would suspect a complete PSU failure at that point.

I really dont think think there is an issue with the PSU at all . All the voltages even if being read wrong by the BIOS are completely fine and as Synthohol pointed out still within spec.You would get an immediate shut down if the PSU were to blame. Windows would not just shut itself down properly.

 

I'm pretty sure Synthohol is suggesting an OS issue as well given the response from his last post

OMGosh, no no, the PS "upside down" thing is meaningless. Electronic components have no orientation of up or down, it they did we'd really be in trouble. All my PC's PS are "upside down", I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

But having said that, something may have happened when you turned it over. Meaning physical damage, but that is unlikely. Was anything else done at that time? You had to unplug and reconnect your PS cables to do that, did they get twisted or stressed?

 

Hmm, I wonder, when flipping the PS, the stresses on the circuit boards, etc, could change from heavy components being pulled by gravity in the other direction. If that did cause an issue, that is still a manufacturing problem that should not happen.

 

Do the volt meter tests and see what happens. Do you know how to start the PS when it is not connected to the PC, or did you have another method in mind?

 

Hey parsec :) i am always extremely delicate when it comes to moving my hardware around, i've always been a firm believer in being light handed with pc components, except when making sure a plug makes a secure connection to a socket though, that does require a little bit of heavy handedness lol, but i do find your comment on gravity on components food for thought though, but lets hope that's not the case :) as far as starting a psu without a motherboard to turn it on, i've already seen all the stuff on the paperclip test, and i've seen someone do it infront of me on an old psu a few years back, but wouldnt that defeat the purpose of testing the psu with a load on it? i was thinking about testing the idle and load voltages by using a spare 4 pin molex while the pc is running(connecting the probes while the pc is off then starting it up after connecting them and so on) what do you think to that idea?

 

If that indeed was the case i would suspect a complete PSU failure at that point.

I really dont think think there is an issue with the PSU at all . All the voltages even if being read wrong by the BIOS are completely fine and as Synthohol pointed out still within spec.You would get an immediate shut down if the PSU were to blame. Windows would not just shut itself down properly.

 

I'm pretty sure Synthohol is suggesting an OS issue as well given the response from his last post

 

hey peanutz, i know you're right, i just thought i would throw that question out there because the shutdown happened during the burn in test on furmark, in all my years using computers i've never seen a psu problem that would allow windows to shut itself down, infact many many years ago i'd bought a new video card for an old system, and when i put the card in, the system literally shut off after 30 seconds or so of switching it on, i swapped the psu for a brand new one and deduced that the old one was just too worn(the new one had a slightly lower wattage rating than the old one, so the old one must have been on its last legs lol) i do have lots of experience with building computers, and with windows operating systems, but when i do need help i always bite the bullet and go somewhere where i can seek advice, i'm going to go reconnect my secondary hdd now and free up some space, create a partition and install a fresh copy of windows 7 onto it to see how long furmark runs for on that, thanks again for your help guys, it's greatly appreciated :)

 

Natalie

Ok so i did what i said i would do, i made a 50gb partition on my secondary hdd and installed a fresh install of windows 7 ultimate onto it, with nothing but the ahci, chipset and video card drivers installed, i then proceeded to run the same burn in test on furmark, with hwmonitor running in the background, i ran it for just over 17 minutes, i might run it again for longer if you guys think tha would be a good idea(the machine shut down in less than 5 minutes of starting the burn in test lastnight), now today i noticed the +12v reading in hwmonitor dipped even lower than it has done so far, it got to 11.90v, hopefully my mother will have picked me up a multimeter by later on, i did ask her to grab me one while she was out, she knows exactly what it is i need, this is so i can confirm what i'm finding in hwmonitor, i need to rule out if the motherboard sensor chip is degrading rather than the psu, a multimeter is the only way to go i guess lol, but anyways i took a snip showing hwmonitor and furmark, so you guys can see what i'm seeing :)

 

Click for the Screenshot

Yeah i see what your looking at and again that is completely normal for any PSU to drop like that at load. I mean you are talking 1/10 of a volt . Which is really nothing.

 

Seriously i have seen my PSU drop to below 11 volts in HWMonitor myself. If you go by that my rig should not have even started in the first place. But i can still fire up any game on max settings and play for hours. And thats with a heft overclock to the cpu and an HD5870 which doesn't exactly sip off of the PSU ! You just cant trust software monitoring for voltages.

 

Let us know how you make out once you get your meter and test them that way and we'll see what else we can do to help if you need.

 

Cheers!

Yeah i see what your looking at and again that is completely normal for any PSU to drop like that at load. I mean you are talking 1/10 of a volt . Which is really nothing.

 

Seriously i have seen my PSU drop to below 11 volts in HWMonitor myself. If you go by that my rig should not have even started in the first place. But i can still fire up any game on max settings and play for hours. And thats with a heft overclock to the cpu and an HD5870 which doesn't exactly sip off of the PSU ! You just cant trust software monitoring for voltages.

 

Let us know how you make out once you get your meter and test them that way and we'll see what else we can do to help if you need.

 

Cheers!

 

i know and i agree with you, the only reason i'm even concerned is that it's never been like this, i never used to see a drop below 12 on it period, regardless of the readings something is degrading, thats my main point i guess :) my mother didn't even try to find a multi meter so i'll have to go get one myself tomorrow, she's the kind of person that doesn't understand how important a psu is inside a pc, she was shocked when i told her how much my psu cost me, i wouldnt of paid any less for it though :P

Ok so i've reserved the multimeter i linked to in the first page of this post, i'll be heading over there tomorrow afternoon(uk time) to collect it, could someone take a look at it on that link and give me a run down of exactly what to set it to? like i've said before, i've never used a multimeter before, so i don't have a clue what exactly i need to set it to when it comes to doing idle and load tests on a pc psu, thanks again :)

No problem. Black probe goes in the "COMM" port , red in the port directly above it. Then turn the selector switch to the left to 20. in the DCV side. Thats it! :)

 

Take your readings!

 

Cheers

Excellent peanutz thankyou very much :) i'll be posting back tomorrow sometime with some pictures of the readings i get, i hope i'm going to get good readings lol :P

You'll be able to check the +12V and +5V with the molex connector. The +3.3V rail will not be as simple, it is available on the SATA power connectors, but you would need to find it among the 12V and 5V contacts, plus find the ground points. SATA connectors use multiple connection points for each voltage, since the connections are physically small.

 

You might want to rig something up to keep the voltmeter probes in the molex connectors so you won't be holding them there all the time. Such as, put the probe in the connector opening first, and then put a toothpick, etc, to keep the probe in place.

 

Be careful to not let the probes touch the PC case, etc, when they are connected to the power supply. Good luck, hopefully your testing will answer your questions and not create more.

will have to wait until tomorrow, was hoping to get a lift from my mothers boyfriend to get the multimeter today, but that's not happening now, the more i use my machine the more worried i get, nevermind the fact that i have a playful cat and i've had my machine running with the right sidepanel off with all my cables exposed.. meh

IMO, you need not worry much, if at all. Do you have another PS? Worst case situation, your TX dies (doubtful) and you install the other. Have the TX replaced.

 

You just know your cat will be in that PC case given the chance, more of an issue than your PS I'd say. ;):

Trying not to worry, my mind will be at rest when i get those readings and post them back here though :) as for having a spare psu, i don't have one at all, not even a cheap one(not that i'd even risk a cheapo psu lol) if i had a spare i would of already wired it in to see what hwmonitor showed its rails at ;) and my cat won't be getting near my pc, her life wouldn't be worth living if she say.. chewed through one of my psu cables, i guess tonight i'll be pushing the exposed side of my pc right up against the wall so she can't get near it, i won't put that sidepanel back on til i've redone my cable management, and there's no point redoing my cable management til i've had a multimeter reading :D

Natalie, i have to agree with Parsec on this. Your not experiencing any crashing, random reboots, ect. Even if the reading are correct in HWmonitor im not sure you could RMA the unit at this time because they are still well within spec and the PSU is functioning fine. I'm not sure why you would not trust your computer or put the cats life in danger over it. :)

 

If later on down the line you do have problems you can then RMA it. If you cant be without your PSU at that time you could always call CS and request an advanced RMA where they send you a new unit before you send the old one back to keep down time to a minimum.