Multimeter

[Teknokid]

Would this do to measure the voltage of components?
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=11807&MenuName=Analogue%20Multimeters&FromMenu=y&worldid=-8&doy=20m1
Also how do you know where to connect them?/ can you do damage by doing it wrong?
Thanks

[maverik-sg1]

Digital is better mate - I got one two year ago from the bay for £5 inclu delivery, it failed just 48hrs ago, but was great in its time, so great i surfed the bay and ordered another one (digital multimeter in search bar).

Others here use fluke and other similar priced £40+ jobbies, but I found that what I purchased was just the ticket.

Cheers

Mav

[Teknokid]

Ok, that makes sense :)
It was going to be mounted on the front of my case (3 of them for ram cpu and spare) would you recomend digital over analogue all the time?
btw where do you plug too?

[BigAndy]

You can pick them up from Maplin starting from £4.99 ;).

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=multimetter&menu=11808&MName=Digital+Multimeters&doy=20m1&SD=Y

[Teknokid]

Cool, may have to get a few of those, where do you attatch them too to measure volts? what are the possible dangers of doing it wrong?

[maverik-sg1]

Well I only use my meter when I have something volt modded, part of that service includes read points from molex conntectors placed in a handy location on the board - as per the work Persivore recently did for sacha. If you ave skill you can make these yourself.

Although its nice to know what the other voltages are in unmodded boards - it's not like you can influence these voltages until mods are in place so I have never bothered, and some of the read points look to be in sensitive areas so I never justified the risk.

[BigAndy]

As Mav said if you will get your kit volt modded by someone else like persivore then most likely there will be dedicated read point included in form of molex which should be very easy to access however if you doing your own volt mod and want to keep soldering to minimum you could leave out molex for read point and use points on your hardware to get readings where you will have to use 1 spike of multimeter for Ground (some point on case) and the other one to get reading from point on your hardware. Do the search on Google for your desired kit and you might find some pics with instructions about how to volt mod and how to read voltage ;).

But please keep in mind that volt modding is very dangerous game and before you do it ask yourself a question: “Is it really necessary and can you afford to replace your hardware if things go wrong?” And believe me things do go wrong :p.


Andy

[Teknokid]

Im not after it for volt modding, but rather to check what my ram and cpu volts are as ive been told mobo readings can be innacurate sometimes. is that true or load of rubbish? obviously i know vdrrop but checking with probe in windows, does that work well?

[BigAndy]

Well as far as I know that BIOS/Windows readings could be slightly off so I would say that to get "real world" reading you would have to use Multimeter.

[Teknokid]

yup, which is where i need help to find it out for cpu...

[BigAndy]

My best bet would be xtremesystems forums failing that you could possibly speak to persivore ;).

[Stocky]

It's a good idea (if you have access) to calibrate the cheaper DVM's. You can usually find the variable resistor under the back cover of a cheapo DVM and calibrate it to a Fluke.

[Jokester]

Aye, I had a cheapo £10 job that I used for tweaking my Meanwell PSU, only thing was everytime I measured the voltage I got something different. Ended up spending £50 on a fluke-a-like and it's been far better.

[Stocky]

Aye, I had a cheapo £10 job that I used for tweaking my Meanwell PSU, only thing was everytime I measured the voltage I got something different. Ended up spending £50 on a fluke-a-like and it's been far better.

This is true and something you have to watch out for - the tolerences of a cheaper DVM are much more loose than say a nice calibrated Fluke (you get what you pay for). I noticed that as the voltage scaled the cheaper one would be more and more out :rollyeyes:

Although, they're usually good enough for the job when tweaking Vmods etc!