How to test a power supply ?

Inglo wrote:

How about buying a power supply tester, they sell them pretty cheap.

Unless it has a digital readout, it's not much good except for telling
if the PSU is completely dead or not. The one I tried said that my
PSU was fine even though the +12V rail was too low to let HDs spin.

A cheap digital multimeter and a bent paperclip to short the green
Power-On line to either of the black ground lines next to it are
usually good enough, but sometimes a couple of 10 ohm, 8-10 watt
resistors are needed to load down the +5V (connect each between a red
wire and a black wire).

On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 21:11:17 -0700, Skybuck
wrote:

Hello,

Some have suggested to buy a voltmeter and then test the power supply.

Since computers have special plugs and such, how would one go about
testing the power supply ?

Are there special plugs necessary ?

(Not that I would ever try it, way to dangerous !)

Do you have a link to a website with some pictures ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

If you don't open the case there's nothing that should bite you.

You need a "dummy load" to load down the PS to test it (many won't
even power up without a load of some sort)

None of the commercial units, I've seen, put enough load on a PS to
stress it (pulling 10 watts from a 300+ watt supply isn't a real
test).

There were some dummy load schematics on the web. What would be good
(don't know if anyone is selling it) would be a plug that can be put
between the PS connector and mobo and analyze and monitor the actual
voltages with some lights to tell you if the power is clean.

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