How to test a new psu without installing into system?

hammerforged

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 23, 2012
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Basically Im getting a new power supply that I plan on sleeving the cables. I dont want to hook everything up to my system so is there a way to test it before I start sleeving the cables? It would really suck to do all that work and it be a fubar unit.

Thanks
 
I used to just get a paper clip and connect the green wire to one of the black ground wires. It'll at least tell you it turns on...but besides taking a volt meter to each cable, you won't *really* know its working until you use it.
 
Yeah what he said, get a paper clip and twist them making a U shape, touch the green and black, if you turned your PSU off, turn it on so it'll power on and continue running itself.
 
You really want to use a voltage meter because the paperclip test won't tell you if the +5V and +3.3V are bad. But don't buy a stupid power supply tester because a digital multimeter is more accurate, cheaper ($3 ones are fine) and can be used for testing a lot more stuff.
 
You really want to use a voltage meter because the paperclip test won't tell you if the +5V and +3.3V are bad. But don't buy a stupid power supply tester because a digital multimeter is more accurate, cheaper ($3 ones are fine) and can be used for testing a lot more stuff.

I read this some where and I have one. Whats the best way to go about doing that? or should I just google it ha?
 
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If you want to do that, might as well plug the PSU to the board and power it up. :D
 
If you jumper your PSU. You should have a small load on it or it may mess it up. Hook up an old HD and a few fans to it.
 
I ended up powering it up and just testing the voltage output on all of the rails with a multi-meter. Worked pretty well. They werent lying this bad boy has some extremely tight voltage regulation. Everything was spot on.
 
Testing without any load is ok to see if proper voltage is present without any load but only testing with full rated load on system will you be able to see if the PSU is providing rated voltage at rated load.
 
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