-12 and -5 rails fluctuate

[chubbymidget]

Running a Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI with a 3800
I have an Enermax Liberty that's reporting fluctuating -12 and -5 readings from MBM and Speedfan. And my Antec Tester reports "Fault". I installed a Antec 480 that I had in another machine and it shows the same thing. But the tester reads "Good" on it.
Tried different outlets breakers, plugs, etc. BIOS doesn't show details on the - rails.

By fluctuating I mean very low -4 thru -10 on the -12 rail. and -2s on the -5.

Is this normal?

What started me testing was a weird lockup as soon as I install my Creative sound card on multiple OS installs.

 

[Navid]

You should use a digital multimeter for measuring the voltages. Software utilities cannot show an accurate measurement because of the limitations of the sensors on the motherboard.

 

[Mark R]

Ignore it.

The -12V and -5V are unused, and PSUs include them for compatability. Some PSUs don't even have them.

 

[GalvanizedYankee]

True, the -5 has been dropped and the -12 is soon to go but if his SB card is an old one,
it could need/use the -5.

The - rails are infamous for not being stable and it generally makes no difference,iirc.

 

[chubbymidget]

Thanks for the info guys. The sound card was an Audigy 2 and after several attempts of installing and system hanging as soon as or right after I installed the drivers(various versions) I figured the card was bad so I replaced with an X-Fi Musicextreme. Same problem.
Had 4 512 sticks of memory that memtest would sometimes throw an error on 1. But multiple long running attempts don't give same results. System has locked up on a couple of memtest runs.
Run CPU burn ins from UBCD but not had issues. I don't remember system ever locking up on any of these.
Windows locks up so fast and hard that event log shows nothing. Anyone know of any other troubleshooting I'm missing?

 

[dBTelos]

Your problem isn't PSU related.

 

[lenjack]

As said above, ignore. -12 and -5 have not been used in years.