Testing (continued):
The first stage of testing involved monitoring the three main voltage rails (3.3V, 5V, and 12V) during idle and load conditions using a Radio Shack digital multimeter (Cat. No. 22-810) connected to the back of the 20+4 pin motherboard connector. The idle condition was established by allowing the system described previously to sit at the Windows desktop with no applications running for a period of at least 30 minutes. The load condition was established by overclocking, running 3DMark06, and by connecting a Seasonic brand "Loader" which can generate up to 148W on the 5V and 12V rails.
The stock settings have the CPU running at 3.0GHz (333MHZ x9) and 1.32Vcore, while the memory is running at 1066MHz and 1.8Vmem. The overclocked settings have the CPU at 3.375 GHz (375MHz x9) and 1.41Vcore, while the memory is at 1200MHz and 2.0Vmem.
The chart below details the findings from the first stage of testing.
While most of the values did fluctuate from idle to load, all rails on the three units tested remained nearly static during each test. For example, even though the reading on the Nesteq unit's 5V rail went from 5.08 to 4.98 (idle to load), once in the loaded condition it rarely moved. It occasionally flickered from 4.98 to 4.99, but that was it. And more importantly, all of the values are within the generally accepted limits of +/- 5% of specification.
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