Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: Lindy ATX Power Supply Unit Tester
Iain Laskey adds a new tool to his PC diagnosing armoury.
| Product | ATX Power Supply Tester |
|---|---|
| Company | Lindy |
| Web | www.lindy.co.uk |
| Price | £29.99 |
| We like | Compact, flexible tester |
| We don't like | poor manual |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements |
In the last year I must have had a dozen or more occasions where I had a misbehaving PC to deal with. In most cases it was a fairly random selection of symptoms - general flakiness, reboots, crashes, running slow etc. When you deal with as many unwell PCs as I do, you often start to get a feel for likely culprits. Sometimes it's the RAM, sometimes it's the hard drive but increasingly commonly these days, it seems to be the PSU or Power Supply Unit, especially with heavily loaded PCs full of extra kit and power hungry graphics cards. The diagnostic test is usually to put a different one in to see if it fixes the problem but that can often take several days before you can safely say the machine has stabilised. It's also a problem if the PC is a gamers rig with a 600w PSU and the only spare PSU to test it is a 350w unit. What I needed is some sort of testing kit. I'd been vaguely looking around at multimeters and the like when we received details here at Practical PC of a new ATX PSU tester from Lindy.
Lindy have a dazzling array of interesting products and a browse through their website is a sure way to lose an hour or two of your time. In this particular instance, we have a very compact piece of kit just 126 x 63 x 17mm that has connectors for testing the following sockets:
20 Pin ATX PSU / 24 Pin ATX PSU - 4P / 6P / 8P
- 5.25” type power / 3.5” type power / SATA power
The first thing that struck us was that it was clearly a bought in device in a rather bland looking generic box that wouldn't look out of place on a computer fair box shifters display. Once opened though, the unit itself was nicely badged with the Lindy logo and looked and felt of high quality even if the 'manual' was a less than stellar translation with little useful information to anyone who wasn't already familiar with what they should be doing.
Testing
Testing is done by first disconnecting the PSU from the mains and then connecting the different output leads from the PSU one at a time then powering up and checking the various displays to see how the output faired. It's usually a good idea to check every connector, especially the myriad of 5.25" plugs for hard drives and the like in case their is a break anywhere. The manual notes this should be done one at a time as connecting two will give a misleading result. A rare burst of insight for the manual.
Connecting an individual power cable results in a single LED lighting up with optional warning buzzer to indicate if it is within tolerance for its connection type. If you connect the main ATX power cable (20 or 24pins being supported), the large LCD display lights up to show the various readings for the whole connection.
As luck would have it, just after this arrived, I had a PC doing strange things so was able to test the PSU to check all the outputs were as expected. One was slightly high, possibly too high given the usual recommendation of any power connector in a PC being +/- 5% of standard - this one was nearer 7% high. In this instance, I didn't find any major fault but it did mean I could assume the PSU wasn't the problem in purely functional terms although it may prove to be too small at 350W. WIth a full range of connectors available, I was able to check the power going to the graphics card and various drives as well as the motherboard itself.
Obviously you can read many of these values in the BIOS or via software when up and running but if your PC is dead as a dodo or you have concerns about the single power connector to a peripheral that seems to be dead, a device like this is your only option.
Conclusion
Given that you can pick up a new PSU for around the same price, this is really a device for those who have to work regularly with different PCs so would suit either a shop or one of those lucky people who fall under the 'You know PCs, mine's doing funny stuff, can you help?' category. Either way, this is a neat device that can take much of the trial and error out of testing. The compact size, clear displays and warnings make it easy to use and such we're happy to recommend it as another tool in your PC diagnosing toolkit.
