• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Power Supply tester

A

arock1_3

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 6, 2004
Messages
1,141
I'm not sure if am posting in the right place but here it goes. What PSU tester would you recommend the most because I need to get one.

Thanks
 
why do you need one? just connect the green wire to a black wire on the atx connector with a paper clip / jumper wire.

i recomend hooking some fans or something up to it though before you turn it on
 
compslckr said:
......just connect the green wire to a black wire on the atx connector with a paper clip / jumper wire.
Click to expand...
I don't know but this sounds kind of dangerous. :D
 
A digital multimeter and either a mobo or some load resistors to apply at least a couple of amps to each voltage rail.

A PSU tester will indicate that a PSU is bad only if at least one of its voltage rails is almost completely dead, and I once used one that said that my PSU was fine even though its +12V rail was too low to make the HD spin.. OTOH a cheap digital multimeter costs about the same but gives highly accurate readings and can be used for testing a lot more than just PSUs.
 
arock1_3 said:
I don't know but this sounds kind of dangerous. :D
Click to expand...
its all of 1 amp or less of +5VSB (Volt Standby) and is less than a 9 volt battery, just a signal that tells the PSU to turn on

larrymoencurly said:
A digital multimeter and either a mobo or some load resistors to apply at least a couple of amps to each voltage rail.

A PSU tester will indicate that a PSU is bad only if at least one of its voltage rails is almost completely dead, and I once used one that said that my PSU was fine even though its +12V rail was too low to make the HD spin.. OTOH a cheap digital multimeter costs about the same but gives highly accurate readings and can be used for testing a lot more than just PSUs.
Click to expand...

^ ;)

cut and paste
Ice Czar said:
closer to the reference value is better than either higher or lower
stuff also doesnt tend to get fried from lower values as much as higher values
anything higher than the 5% range is called an overshoot and that fries most stuff
anything lower is called an undershoot and that makes things unstable


for reference Basic Spec compliance of 5% is
+12V....11.4V to 12.6V
+5V......4.75V to 5.25V
+3.3V...3.135V to 3.465V
but its also a dynamic range
the supply converts power from AC to DC as the load changes from the components
well it also has to keep the reference voltages within the range above while it doing that
so measuring at one point is like watching a single frame in a movie
so logging the voltage is a good idea

that said your BIOS and software is lying to you
what you dont know is by what amount
for that youd need to measure it with a multimeter
cheap ones can be had for $20 or $30 though their accuracy isnt all that much better than the BIOS
they scale up to hundreds of dollars and increasing accuracy

ideally you calibrate your software to a hard measurement (like at idle)
then log till your confident that your within spec at all times

a high reference voltage at idle means that while the supply might be regulating the load within its own parameter,
under some circumstances it could be letting overshoots through
now there are advantages to having a higher reference value if your overclocking
but only if your not allowing overshoots
thats one of the reasons overclockers like supplies with tighter than spec load regulation
so instead of a supply with a range of 5% regulation it has 3% or 1%
and can thus have a higher reference value without letting through overshoots ;)

most components can deal with higher than 5% values and are commonly tested to survive split second 10% values, but these wear on the components

since IC Chips (integrated circuits) vary from pristine to just barely passing the functional test, that means a little "wear" (electromigration) could cause immediate failure or not be noticable degredation for years

more to the point though, the odds are greatly increased for some failure somewhere by the sheer number of IC chips throughout the computer as a whole.
some are behind buffers like the CPU and RAM which have the voltage modified by the motherboards voltage regulation modual, while other lack any buffer at all, like the drives ;)
Click to expand...


its best to test them under a real load so in place powering your computer
or as mentioned building a rig or buying a test station

a rail that doesnt have a load on it will likely be fairly off
which is why you can ignore the negative rails as they arent typically employed anymore
(unless your running some antique cards)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top