Pro tip: I learned to always check the power supply first after a weird job in Austin

I was fixing a gaming PC for a client there last month and spent hours checking the motherboard and GPU before realizing the PSU was just giving unstable voltage. The guy said 'it just started shutting off randomly' which should have been my first clue. What's your go-to method for testing a power supply before you dive into the rest of the system?

3 comments

3 Comments

umamartin1mo agoTop Commenter

Oh man, that's a SOLID tip. I keep a cheap power supply tester in my bag now, the kind with the little LCD screen. But honestly, my first move is just swapping in a known-good PSU from my test bench. If the problem goes away, you just saved a ton of time. Those voltage rails can look okay on a multimeter but still fail under load, which is why a simple swap test is so reliable.

robert_anderson6927d ago

Hold up, is it really that common for PSUs to fail like that though? I've been building PCs for years and maybe had one go bad total. A whole test bench setup feels like overkill if you're not fixing rigs every week.

joseph_adams661mo ago

Feel your pain on that Austin job, chasing weird shutdowns is the worst. I do the same as umamartin and keep a spare known-good unit for a quick swap, it's saved me so many times. Even with a tester, a bad PSU can pass the basic check but still choke when the GPU draws power. Had one last week that would boot to BIOS but crash the second a game loaded, and the swap found it right away. What kind of tester do you use, just the basic LED one or something fancier?