Guide Guide to measure the Voltages of your Power Supply

Since information on measuring voltages of a Power Supply was often requested by members, SunMysore was kind enough to bring about a guide.

I'm posting it on Sunny's behalf, please direct all Reps/Comments his way :) (If you like the formatting, you can rep me :P )



Guide to Measure the Voltages of your Power Supply Unit





Introduction:
This is a guide to measure the voltages of your power supply using a Multimeter. The multimeter gives a more accurate measurement of the voltages than the motherboard software that indicates the voltages. This guide tells you how to measure the voltages of the +3.3V, +5V and +12V rails.

Stuff needed:

1. A long AWG16 wire

2. Digital Multimeter

3. Spare Hard disk power connector (Molex Connector)

Instructions:

How to use the multimeter :

1. Set the voltage range on the Multimeter to 20V DC.



2. Put the Black lead of the Multimeter into any of the Black ground wires of the molex connector.





Readying the 3.3V :


1. Take the long wire, and strip both ends as shown - one end with a short length of wire stripped, the other end with a longer length of wire stripped. Make a loop with the end having the longer length :







2. Remove the ATX motherboard connector. Here's a diagram showing the line voltages on various leads on the 20-pin ATX connector (tnx to Eazy)

11154a177d372edbe.jpg


3. Insert the short stripped end into the Pin 1 (Orange) as shown.



Push it firmly into the socket.



4. Replace the connector back to the motherboard.



5. Place the wire in a secure location, out of the reach of any metal.



Measuring the 3.3V :

1. Ready the Multimeter by following the instructions above.

2. Put the Red lead into the wire loop as shown.



3. The real 3.3V voltage will appear on the multimeter.





Measuring the 5V :


1. Ready the Multimeter by following the instructions above.

2. Put the Red lead into the Red pin of the molex connector.



3. The real 5V voltage will appear on the multimeter.





Measuring the 12V :


1. Ready the Multimeter by following the instructions above.

2. Put the Red lead into the Yellow pin of the molex connector.



3. The real 12V voltage will appear on the multimeter.

 
SunnyBoi said:
well....i dont know :S

but you can measure how mush AC current ur comp is drawing..r.equires 2 DMMs and one calculator :D

use one DMM as voltmeter, another as an ammeter. multiply the readings to get the total current drawn :)
Wasn't going to comment on this post coz it was so old but now that it has been bumped, I thought I should comment.
You cannot take the input voltage and current of an SMPS and calculate power.
Some might even tell you that you need to take care of power factor to calculate the power but in practice that doesn't work too. It is not just that the current is out of phase with voltage as would happen with a reactive load. In an SMPS, it works a little differently. The current actually flows in spurts near the peak of each AC cycle. The only way to measure true input power is to use a Wattmeter that actually does a vector multiplication of the current and voltage.
 
Not able to read the article ... Iam using Firefox 1.5 if that is an issue.

When i click the "Read the entire" link, it leads me to the next page of the thread.
 
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