Comments on: Power Supply Tester

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:55:22 +0000

2 Rich – Well said! These units are just power testers: I have no power or I have power.

But what about the quality of that power? A PSU may be faulting with ripples, drops and spikes; all of which are detrimental to system components.

Even PSU review-sites are flawed if they’re not tested under load.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/410/3

By: Rich

Rich — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:59:54 +0000

You have to know what this tool does in order to get your expectations in line.

It is just to quickly check if the psu is defective. Just like a quick ram tester, it’s there to eliminate the easy problems fast and move on to what is really the problem.

btw if you really don’t like this or want to continue to complain you can always build your own psu tester with an adjustable load. A small one should still fit in your bag.

Personally it’s a cheap way for a fast check so I can move on to the next test.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:57:53 +0000

Got one of these off ebay. So far I’ve only used it once and the PSU was fine. It’s one of my best editions to my kit so far this year.

By: Larry

Larry — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:42:07 +0000

The LCD provides realtime voltages for the rails. This does not provide a load this is true. Tenma has one that will but for triple the price and only provides 1A. I seem to have noticed, from various websites, that the CoolMax or at least the ones with the black connectors are very tight or can easily reverse the connectors if new or not paying attention. Remember guys these are not for testing load or long term. More than a minute and these things heat up, the old plastic ones use to melt.

By: BernardV

BernardV — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:36:24 +0000

Is there much difference in the versions with and the ones without LCD. Do they all provide the same tests ? Just curious.

By: Ronald P. Nosack

Ronald P. Nosack — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:06:41 +0000

Recently had a box in here that appeared to have a bad PS. The tester showed that it was good. Anyhow, I put a new PS in as a test, and it booted OK. So don’t just rely on this tool. It can and will fail you.
Packrat1947

By: Keeno B

Keeno B — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:12:43 +0000

Would one of the units work for laptops as well?

By: Stu

Stu — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:55:34 +0000

I have a similar tester, although not as fancy, and I have had mixed results with it.

The main problem I have with these testers is that they do not test the PSU when under load, which is when some of the weirder problems occur.

For instance, I recently had a machine that was crapping out during Windows installation, always rebooting at the same point. The tester said the PSU was fine, but it wasn’t until I replaced the PSU that the problem was solved.

The ones that it does find tend to be the obvious ones.

By: Fahad

Fahad — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:50:04 +0000

I need to buy one of these as well. I am just too lazy to go down to the store and look for one.

By: Skyhooker

Skyhooker — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:54:45 +0000

I bought the one shown in the article but with black plastic connectors rather than white, branded under Coolmax, but it was all but unusable. Of the 4 PSs I tried to test, I could only connect the 20/24 pin connector on one – the connector was just too tight. I don’t know if the plastic fitting was molded to too tight a tolerance or the pins were too large (pins seemed awfully thick and square-cut, either for ease of manufacture or durability, not sure which). In any case, I returned it to Tiger Direct for refund. Anyone else with similar experience? I really liked the digital display (on the one PS I was able to test, that is).