Pvt. Pritchard

It is actually very simple to measure your rails very accuratly by using a multimeter. I do not trust software voltage monitors at all and you should'nt either. So first things first. Your going to have to buy a multimeter from your local hardware store, or you might already have one at home. Ask your parents ( if you live at home :D)if your not sure. I bought a very nice, top notch digital one from home depot for 30 bucks, but you don't have to spend that much. The rails I'm going to be measuring today are the 5v rail and the 12v rail. It is just as easy to measure the 3.3v rail also, but I do not have an AUX cable coming from my PSU (orange). The 5v rail wires are red, and the 12v are yellow. Any and every Black wires are GROUND wires, and need to be used for measuring voltage.


First set your multimeter to 20 in the DC section (usually red)


Then pull out a free 4-pin molex connector shown here


Then the fun begins. heheh. insert the red probe into the hole of the red wire on the molex connector and the black probe into one of the two Black Ground wires shown here


Here are my results. completely stable no matter what kind of load at 5.03.


Now do the exact same process as before, but instead of putting the red probe in the red molex hole, insert it into the yellow hole. Here are my results. Rock solid stable at 12.13 and sometimes itll drop to 12.12 for a millisecond while on load.


Hopefully now you have a lot better idea of how stable your psu is and what kind of voltage it's putting out. In software programs it would monitor my 12v Rail at 11.9 or 12.01, or even 15.06. lol, but now I am able to see the actual voltage and stabilty of my PSU. Have a nice day :)

Pvt. Pritchard

Burn

:) Good job, I might suggest resizing your pictures. I need to scroll sideways to read the rest of your text. Others probably run higher resolution, but just wanted to let you know. Good job again.

jrabb1920

Good job, Good detail.

steveo42024

What kind of multimeter is that? Good job rep+

Hollowman8904

Nery Nice. I've been wondering how to go about doing this.....

Pvt. Pritchard

its a commercial electric HDM4100

somody

I run 1162x864 resolution, and still have to move sideways...so RESIZE!!! rep+

Pvt. Pritchard

resized :)

Sprog

Excellent, nice and clear. Even I can do it now!

ncsa

There are also the 3.3v, CPU, DRAM, Chipset rails that should also measured.. with the 3.3 being the easier of those to find - the others are MB dependant. But this will then allow you to know what the rails are for real rather than the SW sensor readout. A monitor tool, such as MBM5, could then be adjusted to correctly display the true voltage.

The 3.3v rail is on the 24-pin main MB loom and is the orange coloured wire.

It is also best to see how the PSU operates across the +3.3, +5 & +12v rails under Boot/Post, OS loading, OS Idle, OS Load to see any variances.

Any PSU that is close to the lower end of the ATX12V spec should be returned / RMA as it will likely cause issues early on in life.

Add those in with some pics and you'll have a great FAQ :D