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Testing my powersupply??

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Neofate

Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2003
Location
USA
I have installed everything into my new case, and it has a rather generic powersupply.

A picture of my powersupply:
http://webpages.charter.net/jaredguess/psu.jpg

Recognize it?

However, I don't really want to trash the thing if it will perform for a few months until I get some spare cash to buy a "real" PSU. I have a nice multimeter/voltameter (sp?), so I figured I could test the powersupply under load to see how it holds up.

What is the general procedure for doing this?

Ie: Ground one end, and touch the hot end to the red socket of the molex, etc? (speculating).

Please be as specific, and detailed as you can be.

Also giving me a good approx. range of specifications that my PSU should be at, at different loads. IE: The 12V (red) on the 4 pin Moltex should be at apporx 11.4-11.8V under load.. (Just a hypothetical example).

If applicable please give me the information for all the different color/voltages of wires that I can test.

Thanks in advance!
 
The positive voltages are supposed to be within 5% of their official values, but they also shouldn't vary by more than 5% from no-load to full load. A computer usually won't apply more than half-load to each rail, so I'd look for the voltages to vary only about 2.5% between no-load and load.

Connect the meter probe with the black wire going to it to one of the black wires of the PSU or to bare metal on the case (if you have a plastic case, the power supply case may not be connected to anything -- another reason to avoid plastic cases). Connect the meter probe with the red wire going to it to the mobo connector that has a red wire going to it to check the +5V, orange or brown wire for +3.3V , red wire for +12V, or purple wire to check the standby +5V. Be careful not to let a meter probe slip and short something.

Dell PSUs use a different color code, and the +3.3V wires are blue with a white stripe. You may want to also measure at connectors that aren't plugged into anything, to see any voltage problems are due to the PSU or to bad connections. I once measured +4.6V on a red wire on the mobo connector, but on an unused disk drive a red wire measured 5.x V, so I knew that I had a loose connection.
 
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