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join:2003-11-01
Juana Diaz, PR

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Intel Desktop Utilites +3.3V warning

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I have a dekstop system with an Intel motherboard is having a warning telling that "a voltage +3.3V is outside the recommended range" appearing lately when a few tasks are running at the same time. The motherboard and processor are three years old and have never seen this before. Attached is an image of the Intel Desktop Utilities hardware monitoring page.

What can cause this?

VegasMan
Living the Vegas life.
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join:2002-11-17
Las Vegas, NV

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Judging that your 12v and 5v look to be rock solid I would guess that the 3.3v regulator on your mobo is going bad.

Open it up and look for some bulging or leaking caps around the CPU or RAM.

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Juana Diaz, PR

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Caps look fine all around the board. While I was at it I noticed that the PSU is dated Feb-2006 (I have been putting dates in components for a few years now) making it almost 7 years old. Could this be the signal of a failing PSU?

FizzyMyNizzy
join:2004-05-29
New York, NY

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said by printscreen:

Caps look fine all around the board. While I was at it I noticed that the PSU is dated Feb-2006 (I have been putting dates in components for a few years now) making it almost 7 years old. Could this be the signal of a failing PSU?

I am also thinking it is the PSU issue. PSU degrade over time.
Thordrune
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join:2005-08-03
Lakeport, CA

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I'd check it with a multimeter to be sure.

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Juana Diaz, PR

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said by Thordrune:

I'd check it with a multimeter to be sure.

I could do that but have no idea where.
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Found it. The orange wires in the big connector are the +3.3 V lines. There are four and three of them have low voltage right now although it is running better today than the image in my first post.

Edit: Tested under load with machine running.
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Well I went ahead and put a new PSU and the above is the result. I looks like the old one is showing its age. At least it didn't fail catastrophically like previous PSUs in the past. I will keep it around as a spare in case of emergency since it still works.

What are the two voltages in the bottom? The memory controller thing stayed at about the same value and the other keeps going up and down over time both with the old and new PSU.
Thordrune
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join:2005-08-03
Lakeport, CA

Thordrune

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The left one is for the memory controller as you said. The right one is the voltage for the CPU itself. If it's dropping under load, you're seeing the effects of Vdroop.

koitsu
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I'm in agreement with FizzyMyNizzy See Profile; I'd recommend replacing the PSU first. If the problem continues, replace the motherboard. Those are the only two components which could explain this behaviour (specifically since you're using Intel's native utilities on an Intel native board which calculate voltage/etc. correctly).

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Juana Diaz, PR

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Yup, I did that already. Since the existing PSU was a bit old already I just went ahead and got a new one today. I only saw the voltage error message a few times during a period of one hour or so and was actually the first time I paid attention to voltage levels. The error didn't show up again but the +3.3 V always kept in the yellow on the low side at times venturing into red briefly. With the new PSU all three voltages on top went up above their nominal value but the lower was didn't change.

So I guess it is fixed.

Thanks for the replies.
Thordrune
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Lakeport, CA

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Actually, now that I look at the before and after pictures, the CPU voltage fluctuation is probably caused by SpeedStep. When the CPU is idle, it lowers its frequency and voltage, reducing power consumption and heat. You can check for this by running CPU-Z and watching the core speed and voltage sections.