That warning light on my PSU almost cost me a whole system at a LAN party in Cleveland

I was at a LAN party in Cleveland last month and my buddy's rig just shut down mid-game, no errors, no nothing. He kept trying to swap parts, buying new RAM and even a different GPU from someone there, spent like $150 on stuff he didn't need. Turned out his power supply was a cheap off-brand unit that was barely handling his load, and the internal voltage was dropping under stress. I pulled out a cheap PSU tester I got for $15 on Amazon and it caught the issue in 30 seconds. He swapped in a used EVGA unit I had in my trunk and the machine ran fine for the rest of the night. Has anyone else dealt with a flaky PSU that doesn't show obvious signs like noise or smell?

2 comments

2 Comments

riverp3710d ago

A PSU tester is a handy tool, but that story sounds more like a lucky guess than a real diagnosis. Those cheap testers just check if the rails are alive, they don't show ripple or voltage sag under load. Your buddy could have easily fixed the real issue by swapping cables or reseating the 24-pin connector. Most off-brand power supplies are junk but they usually die with a pop or a smell long before they cause intermittent shut downs. Without a proper multimeter or an oscilloscope you are just guessing what part is bad. I have seen more people waste money on testers and used parts than just replacing the PSU outright.

black.margaret9d ago

yeah but nobody's talking about how those cheap psu testers can actually give you a false sense of security. i had one that showed all greens on a dying psu, swapped it anyway, and the new one fixed everything. the testers just check if the voltage is present, not if it's stable or clean. so you end up chasing ghosts when the real problem is ripple or sag that only shows under load. i'd rather spend $20 on a multimeter than $15 on one of those led light shows that tells you nothing useful.