strange voltages with my Abit KT133A

[ChemMan]

This is something I've noticed before but never gave any attention to until now. SoftMenu reports my i/o voltage as being set to 3.3 volts, yet under the PC health status screen it reports the actual voltage as being 3.52 volts. I had to reduced the i/o voltage setting to 3.10 to get the bios to report the actual voltage as 3.31 volts. Could this mean that the board itself is improperly regulating the voltage or that the reading in the bios is off. Motherboard monitor and via hardware monitor report the same thing as the bios. When I lowered the i/o voltage the idle temp of my processor went from 38 C to 42 C (1 gig thunderbird). Is that normal?

The same thing is true for the processor voltage. When the bios is set to 1.75 volts the actual voltage is 1.84. I had to decrease the setting to 1.675 to get the bios and MBM to report the actual value of 1.76 volts. Doing so lowered the idle temp of my processor from 42 C to 35 C.

Could this be the motherboard or the bios sensors causing this problem? The computer is running right now at the lower voltage settings as I described above, and is as stable as ever. What seems to be going on here? Also, could this cause problems with different manufactures of RAM?

Thanks for listening to my ramblings

 

[Boonesmi]

powersupplies arent perfect (refering to the 3.3v)
they always seem to either be a little above or a little below spec (the little extra voltage wont hurt anything, but it can help system stability)

with the vcore thats regulated by the mobo, and once again every motherboard ive seen adds a little extra to the vcore for performance/stability reasons


your numbers of 3.52v and 1.84v are pretty normal (especially the 1.84vcore)... but since you have already lowered them if the system stays stable you can always leave them where they are, otherwise i would just leave them at default.

 

[ChemMan]

Thanks for the input Boonesmi. I'll keep an eye on the stability and put the settings back if things get funny.