Power Supply troubleshooting

Charlie · August 21, 2014

Okay so the problem started with my hard drive, one of my WD Green drive was not spinning up during system boot (later eventually after few minutes it would show up in computer), boot SSD was working fine, so just for the sake of it I put my multimeter across the 12volt pins on the molex connector and I saw when I press the power/during post button the voltage is around 10.5 when system is idle its exactly 12 volts, as soon as I fire up any game the voltage dips to 11 volts and as there are different scenes in the game voltage varies from 10.9 to 11.86. Now my question is is the power supply gone bad? Is there anything I can do to fix it? By the way Its a Cooler Master extreme power plus 460W. The PC stays on 24x7 because I use it as a media center.

Other configuration:

Gigabyte GA-H77M-D3H
Core i5 3570K (Non overclocked)

8GB DDR3

GTX 550TI

128 GB Samsung 840 Pro

2 WD Green 2TB drives

If the power supply is really dying please suggest me a good power supply probably a non cooler master. Thanks guys

dragoon20005 · August 22, 2014

yea it seem to be the PSU is dying

not all Coolermaster models are bad you just have to pick the V and VSM series under the PSU line up

for a budget the Corsair CX500 or the Seasonic may do the trick

SlayerOfHellWyrm · August 22, 2014

The tolerance for the +12V rail is ±5%. Therefore, the +12V raile is considered within tolerance if the voltage reads from 11.4V - 12.6V. Anything outside of that range is unacceptable, and the PSU is beginning to fail. You should purchase a new one ASAP. As for 24/7 operation, that's not ideal for normal PSU's, however, it's not worth getting a server PSU for a media centre. If you can, I suggest using Wake on Lan on all connected devices, so the media PC simply shifts into sleep when it's not being used, which will greatly extend the lifespan of it. If you can't, manually put it into sleep, there's no need for it to be 100% on, and idle, 24/7, and that will definitely shorten your PSU life span.

Charlie · August 25, 2014

Thanks guys, I bought a Corsair CX500, as for computer running 24x7 I now put it to standby before going to bed, that way save a little energy and possibly better component life too.