• 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.

Safe way to quickly test PSU

E

eli2k

Weaksauce
2FA
Joined
Oct 29, 2008
Messages
92
A clip I saw online showed how to test a PSU without having it connect it to anything by shorting two of the pins with a paperclip, and attaching some fans or something to provide a load for the PSU. Another article mentioned doing this is not really good for the PSU. If I had to test it, I have to unplug cables from a current setup, so I'm wondering if the above method is pretty safe, or should I not risk it?

- Eli
 
You put one end of the paperclip in the green wire hole, and the other in any of the black wire holes. Flip it on, and the PSU fan should spin if its working.

Now, that will not tell you how it does under load though, or how the voltage rails are doing. For that you need a DMM.
 
Oh, and its perfectly safe to do it. I run mine for a day at time like that each time I change something with my water cooling to leak test.
 
Thanks. Good to know that you haven't had any problems with it. Just so I don't kill the power supply, I looked at the big plug, if I label the empty pin as pin3, then go across to the green/black wires, it's pin6 and pin7? Pin7 is green, Pin6 is black, but you said I can use any black wire, but just in case.
 
I never paid attention to the actual pin numbers, but there's only one green wire that comes from your PSU. All the black wires are grounds so they're all the same, but I usually use one right next to the green wire for convenience's sake.
 
Cecil said:
Oh, and its perfectly safe to do it. I run mine for a day at time like that each time I change something with my water cooling to leak test.
Click to expand...

I've done it multiple times to test hdds for spin up/ spin down.
 
Thanks, everyone. I just tested it out myself, PSU fan spins, the fans I attached also spin. Looks good!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top