# 3.3v Reported 2.9v in Bios when O'clocked.



## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Apr 11, 2011)

Well just now, my pc has been acting unstable after a year of 4hz usage (very unstable, doesnt boot to OS kind.). Was able to play up to last saturday stable with it, it just started acting up weird for no apparent reason when I woke up the next day.

I thought it was just a degraded proc, but then Im suspecting voltage irregularities. I checked the on board monitoring in bios, 3.3v reports being 2.92v - 2.97v when overclocked. 12v dances around 12.1-ish, 5v dances around 5.2-ish.

I tried messing around with the voltage settings on the same overclock.. pumped up cpu core to 1.28v from 1.25v, pll to 1.7v from 1.56v, selected the 3 GTL option, NB, FSB termination etc etc, but same outome in the 3.3v.

Running it on stock, and the 3.3v runs in 3.1v. 12v at 11.98, and 5v in 5.1-ish or something. Pretty much stable.

Is this 3.3v being underpowered the reason for system instability in my once stable OC?
Is this 3.3v reported in the bios accurate? 
Is it time to change PSU?
Or is this a degraded mobo / CPU thing? (heck I cant even get stable at 3.6ghz with minimal voltage increase).

Been using this PSU for maybe 3.5 years now. Its fan broke up one time a few months back , that it overheated to shutdown. But I replace it with a similar fan with the same specs (Yate Loons 2000 rpms .70amp). The overheating mustve farked things up for it. dunno.

Tried running it with just my pump and hardrives (2) just hooked up, and still unstable in my once stable oc. CPU / mobo temps are ok btw.


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## slyfox2151 (Apr 11, 2011)

everyone i have ever herd has said volts messured by software or BIOS is never accurate enough to come to any conclusion.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Apr 11, 2011)

yeah have been reading about that as well.. but a drop of 3.1v stock to 2.91v oc'd.. dunno.


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## JrRacinFan (Apr 11, 2011)

3.3v is good within a tolerance of  +/- .3v so with that said , going by bios, you are out of spec. No doubt that the psu may be the culprit or possibly could be the board. Question is, how many of your hard drives are SATA interface and how many PCIe cards are you running? You are going to have to find a multimeter to double check that 3.3v rail.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Apr 11, 2011)

JrRacinFan said:


> 3.3v is good within a tolerance of  +/- .3v so with that said , going by bios, you are out of spec. No doubt that the psu may be the culprit or possibly could be the board. Question is, how many of your hard drives are SATA interface and how many PCIe cards are you running? You are going to have to find a multimeter to double check that 3.3v rail.



Ive got 2 hdd in sata, and 2 pcie cards (a soundcard and a GPU)..


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## arnoo1 (Apr 11, 2011)

get a multimeter, and check your main 24 pin connector, software is never accurate, that's why new oc board get voltage read out points


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## JrRacinFan (Apr 11, 2011)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> Ive got 2 hdd in sata, and 2 pcie cards (a soundcard and a GPU)..



Ok. Uninstall the Xfi for a bit just to see what happens. Only way to fully test this would be a different power supply. As was said before, it's power supply or board causing it or your cpu is degrading as you pointed out in OP.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Apr 11, 2011)

yeah.. sadly, I do not have the luxury of having 2 psu.. was one of the option I had in mind. Going to remove xfi and boot up with the spare (albeit garbaged) gtx260 later.



arnoo1 said:


> get a multimeter, and check your main 24 pin connector, software is never accurate, that's why new oc board get voltage read out points


yeah.. but then I wont be able to see if its really dropping out when OCd.. I dont know if this board has one of them voltage readouts points readily available


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## JrRacinFan (Apr 11, 2011)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> yeah.. sadly, I do not have the luxury of having 2 psu.. was one of the option I had in mind. Going to remove xfi and boot up with the spare (albeit garbaged) gtx260 later.



I would try without changing video card first.


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## arnoo1 (Apr 11, 2011)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> yeah.. sadly, I do not have the luxury of having 2 psu.. was one of the option I had in mind. Going to remove xfi and boot up with the spare (albeit garbaged) gtx260 later.
> 
> 
> yeah.. but then I wont be able to see if its really dropping out when OCd.. I dont know if this board has one of them voltage readouts points readily available



you can my friend set it min max mode, and you will see what max is and what min is, just monitor it, give it a try, my shitty mobo tells me that my 12v line is 11.8v or something on my corsair tx950, multimeter says 12.3v


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Apr 12, 2011)

Ok, so Im now running with just the GTX580, everything from the 12v4 rail was removed except for the hardrives and pump. 3.3v in the bios now reports 3.1v even when o'clocked. Fans are all off and stuff, and im now currently on passive cooling @ 4ghz profile while typing this.. looks like the voltage report from the bios was right all along. My suspect is probably the scythe kama meter, and 5 high speed fans attached to it.. (I added additional 2 lately, but I removed em again when the oc started to act up. Prior to this, I wasnt booting to the OS. ).. I just calculated it again, and it was drawing 31watts in total.. and those are just for the fans 

Curse this quad rail fad! Single rail is always the best route . In anycase, I'll still keep the old crapper (gigabyte odin pro) until it blows up on me .

Thanks for the tips

Come to think of it, maybe it was the psu thats holding me back from 4.5ghz all along :| (was having problems with that, thought it was a mobo thing)


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Apr 15, 2011)

Meh, still unstable when firing up Heaven bench with an OCd GPU. Went ahead and bought an HX850. Problem solved


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