The PSU tester I doubted actually caught a dying drive train

I picked up one of those cheap $25 power supply testers from a swap meet in Reno about 6 months ago, mostly for the LED readout because it looked cool. Last week I had a customer's machine that would boot fine but randomly freeze under load, and I was chasing RAM and temps for two days. Out of boredom I hooked up the tester to their old 500 watt unit and the 12V rail read 11.2V, which is way out of spec. Swapped in a refurbished PSU I had on the shelf and the freezing vanished completely. That little tool just paid for itself ten times over and now I use it on every used build I take in. Has anyone else had a cheap diagnostic tool surprise them like that, or am I the last guy to sleep on basic testing equipment?

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jenny4729d ago

Funny you mention that. My buddy Mike runs a small repair shop and he picked up one of those same testers off Amazon, mostly as a joke. He had a customer's rig that kept throwing random BSODs, no rhyme or reason. He swapped RAM, reseated everything, even flashed the BIOS. Out of pure frustration he plugged in the tester and the 5V rail was sitting at 4.6V. He replaced the PSU and it ran perfect for a year after that. Now he keeps that tester in his front pocket like a security blanket.