Power Supply Question

[farmercal]

One my computers with an Antec 420 watt has the +12 volt rail running around +12.04 volts, the other Antec 330 watt is running around +11.67 volts but a friends computer's +12 volt rail is running between 11.28 - 11.35 (Sparkle 400 watt). Does anyone know how much voltage you can lose before it is bad for a system?

 

[oneshot47]

What are you using to read the voltage? Bios and monitor programs can be wrong, you need to use a mm to make sure of a reading. The rule of thumb i always hear is to keep it within 5-10% of the theoretical voltage.

 

[farmercal]

This reading came from the BIOS. The reason I asked is because his hard drive lost a lot of data and I had to reformat and load all of his software over again. I thought the low 12 volt may have been the cause of the hard drive problem.

 

[oneshot47]

Ive lost data on a hard drive for that reason, so its possible. But you should still check the voltages by hand to make sure.

 

[farmercal]

I'll check it with a multi-meter. Thanks.