Seasonic Super Silencer 400 can't produce stable 3.3 voltage

furymouse · Post by **furymouse** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 10:58 pm

I have my temp monitoring software set at 5% +3.3V threshold. Playing a not very system demanding CS : S causes the alarms to go off. It drops to as low as 3.12 (that would be below what I would expect from a PSU at this price and with all the praise it gets).

I've tried the 350W Cooler Master PSU that came with my Centurion 5 and it got more stable voltages than this Seasonic Super Silencer.

Aleksi · Post by **Aleksi** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 11:48 pm

Actually your Seasonic maybe just fine. Usually motherboard sensors are more or less inaccurate. Your PSU maybe producing exactly 3,3V, but but your motherboard maybe reading it as 3,2V, 3,4V etc...

So the only sure way of knowing how much the voltages are, is to use a digital multimeter and measure them yourself.

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 4:51 am

Aleksi is right. The voltages you see in your bios / internal sensors are voltage off the motherboard.

First of all, the sensor can be inaccurate in itself (they often are).

Second, the voltage drop you observe on the motherboard sensor is almost always due to a voltage drop caused by the motherboard (or a pci/agp/pci-e card). The voltage from the PSU molex might still read perfectly ok. It's just the motherboard which has trouble keeping up the voltage.

The only way to test you psu through it's molex connector with a multimeter and see if the voltage drops during load.

My seasonic was rock stable during load.

furymouse · Post by **furymouse** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 1:25 pm

Those voltages could be a little bit off but not this much

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 2:14 pm

3.232 is 2% out of spec.
5.053 is 1% out, and 12.038 is <1%.

This is nothing to worry about. Also, pay attention to what was said earlier, the voltages on the motherboard report the OUTPUT voltage on the motherboard, not the input from the PSU.

If you have a modern system, it's possible the load pattern of your system is less than ideal for the Super Silencer (which is out of date), which could explain why the voltage drops to 3.12V.

However, the most important thing to remember is this: As long as your system is stable, it doesn't matter what your voltages are. If your system is crashing, that's one thing, but I highly doubt that even a 5% variance (3.12V is 5.7% out of spec) will be enough to make your system unstable. Although most PSUs and motherboards are speced to +/- 5%, the actual point at which instability becomes an issue is often much greater.

rtsai · Post by **rtsai** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 3:01 pm

Devonavar wrote:If you have a modern system, it's possible the load pattern of your system is less than ideal for the Super Silencer (which is out of date), which could explain why the voltage drops to 3.12V.

Actually, does Seasonic have a pass-through successor to the Super Silencer in the works? Or is the bottom-feeding S12 all we get?

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 3:35 pm

For now, your stuck with the bottom feeding S12.

cyberknight · Post by **cyberknight** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 3:57 pm

I just installed a Seasonic S12-430 yesterday. I notice my 3.3 is alittle lower than my other PSU's. It idles at 3.2V

I had a PowerQ (Fortron) 300W, that gave me 3.3V exactly.
My Antec True380S gave me 3.28V.

but I'm not gonna worry about it, still well within spec.

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 7:01 pm

Devonavar wrote: However, the most important thing to remember is this: As long as your system is stable, it doesn't matter what your voltages are.

And because it's the 3.3v line, you don't need to worry about the theoretical possibility of it wearing out a hard drive at an accellerated rate.