Chat with a junior tech made me rethink my power supply testing habits

Talked to this kid Mike last Tuesday at Micro Center who said he never tests PSUs under load before installing them. Told him I just use a multimeter on the standby rails and call it good. But then he showed me this Gamers Nexus video about ripple voltage and I realized my $40 tester from Amazon misses all the real issues. Have any of you actually caught a bad PSU with a basic tester or am I the only one skipping load testing?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo_gonzalez6813d ago

That video from Gamers Nexus really opened my eyes too. Did that kid Mike ever tell you what brand of PSUs he usually buys? I'm wondering if cheap units show more ripple voltage than quality ones. My buddy's Corsair RM850x tested clean as a whistle under load but that same tester caught a ThermalTake unit throwing out wild voltage spikes. Kinda makes you wonder if we're all just wasting money on basic testers.

gavine4112d ago

Swapped out my old EVGA unit for that exact Corsair RM850x after seeing the Gamers Nexus stuff, @hugo_gonzalez68. The ripple on my multimeter went way down under heavy GPU load, like half what it was. Yeah, those cheap testers only catch the big stuff but it still gave me some peace of mind for $40.