
If you’ve seen all good results with the steps above, it’s likely not your power supply that was the problem. Now, above is really the only specific steps you can take to verify the integrity of your power supply. And, it’s good to catch it early so you don’t risk damage to any other components. Or, at least stop using it immediately, as your power supply shouldn’t be emitting any strange smells. It’s worth noting that if you smell a burning coming from your PSU, replace it immediately. However, if you start to see your VDC ratings go anything outside of that range, your power supply is bad and needs to be replaced. The last one can have a range +/- range of 10%. The first three can have a +/- range of 5%. But, whether you’re using a power supply tester or a multimeter, there are four specific volts of direct current to look out for: Power II is particularly neat because it has built-in alarms to signify abnormal power supply activity. If you don’t feel comfortable with the paper clip trick, there are plenty of power supply testers out there that you can get for around $35 or less. If the fan turns on, it’s likely that your PSU isn’t the problem, but if you have a multimeter, you can check what the power output of the PSU, just to make sure. Now, set the connector onto the ground, and with the PSU plugged into the wall, turn the switch on the PSU itself to the ON position. Now, insert one point of the paper clip into the green wire slot and the other point into any black wire. Take a paper clip and bend it into a U shape. There’s only a single green wire, so it should be quite easy to find. Now, take your 20- or 24- pin connector and locate the green wire. Before doing this, ensure that the switch on the PSU is turned OFF. If you can, remove the PSU from your computer case entirely for the best access. If your computer isn’t turning on, you’ll need to unplug all of your components from the PSU. If your computer won’t turn on, there’s not many ways to test the PSU. In the case of a PSU, if it’s broken, throw it out and buy a replacement.
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If you do that, there’s potential for a capacitor discharge, and unless you know how to do that safely, it’s not a great thing. It’s also worth nothing that you should never attempt to open up your power supply to fix something. While you’d only get shocked by a maximum of 24 volts, it’s still a situation best to avoid. TroubleshootingĪs a warning of caution: be very careful as you proceed, as you could very easily get shocked. Truth be told, you shouldn’t be smelling anything coming from your PSU, so if you smell a burning smell or something resembling close to that, shut it down immediately and make sure to turn the switch on the PSU itself to OFF.Īs we said, there aren’t many symptoms of an oncoming power supply failure, as it’s mostly a situation where it’s working or it isn’t however, as far as frequent shut offs go, it could be a different component going bad entirely, so it’s important that we do some troubleshooting before determining the power supply is the problem. Burning smell: Another frequent case of a PSU dying is almost a burning smell.Unfortunately, it’s difficult to test for this unless you can manage a way to see what the output was at time of shut down. Frequent shut offs: Since your PSU (Power Supply Unit) supplies power to all of your components, you could notice it going bad if you’re seeing frequent shutoffs.Power supplies also exhibit pretty obvious symptoms, but not many. For example, if a hard drive were to fail, there are some obvious signs, such as frequent blue screens, missing files, etc. When a component is failing, sometimes you’ll see some warning signs in advance. But, if you follow along below, we’ll try to help you nail down the problem! Warnings Unfortunately, there’s not really a way to “save” these components from certain death, so it’ll almost always need replacing. In this article, we’re going to show you how to diagnose and troubleshoot power supply failure.
