5 Volt Rail Voltage Acceptable?

[Qualin]

Been noticing my computer crashing during 3D Gameplay. Motherboard Monitor complains that the
5 volt rail has reached 4.58v, which is outside of the 8 percent tolerance from 5 volts.

I know it goes out of tolerance because I can hear an alarm coming through the PC speaker after
a few minutes of gameplay. Then the machine crashes completely. After a reboot, the machine
complains about some crosslinked files and invalid long filenames.

I have upgraded the southbridge drivers, northbridge AGP Miniport driver and upgraded to
DirectX 8.1. I also upgraded the drivers to my Radeon AIW.

My computer has the following devices:

1. Creative Labs 5X DVD-ROM
2. AOpen 8x4x2 CD-Burner
3. Dual 40 GB UDMA/100 HDD (WD)
4. Driving 3 80 mm fans (One a 5000 RPM unit found on Swifttech HS's) & 1 60 mm fan
5. 1 100 MB ZIP drive, 1 Seagate Travan-2 drive and a Floppy Disk.
6. 1 PC-Geiger VICS unit. (4 number LED display)
7. 1 Gigabyte GA-7DXR with Athlon 1.4 Ghz CPU & 512 MB of DDR.
8. ATI Radeon AIW
9. Hercules Game Theatre XP & Generic 10/100 NIC

I am currently using a 350 watt Enermax PSU with all this. Is the PSU adequate or should
I buy a unit with a higher wattage rating? Low 5v rail indicates to me that the PSU is either
failing or overloaded.

Any ideas?

 

[DaiShan]

the crash is associated with lack of power, I would get a new PSU if I were you, 350 is probably fine, it might just be going bad, but you might want to invest in a higher watt (by a good company like enermax)

 

[bozo1]

My Enermax 431 recently went bad. 5-volt line was around 4.78 for about a year. (dual processor system) Over time, it kept going down and down. Things were fine for me until it got below 4.5. I replaced it with an Antec TruePower and it now sits at 4.97.

 

[Workin']

ATX spec puts a 5% tolerance on +5V line, and a 10% tolerance on -5V line.

But that's as measured with a voltmeter, not a motherboard monitoring chip/utility.

It really is funny that so many people think the voltage the monitor reports is accurate to 2 decimal places.

It's just as likely, for example in bozo1's case, that the old PSU was putting out 5.00V when it was reported as 4.78, and now the new one is putting out 5.19 when it is reported as 4.97. The only way to know for sure is to use real measuring equipment with known accuracy. Otherwise you are really just guessing.

 

[bozo1]

My testing was with a voltmeter. The readings were very close to what my BIOS reported.