Power Supply Torture Test

An anonymous reader writes "With the latest batch of power hungry graphics cards, the PSU in your computer is more important than ever. If you're looking for a new power supply, check out this group test. They've tested 19 PSUs - some good, some bad and some downright explosive!"

Comments

pling

[private Burrito]

In soviet russia power supply torture tests you

What happened?

[michelcultivo]

Maybe the guys at Trusted Reviews don't use the recommended Power Supply of it has been /.ed

Can you look at this for me?

[markmcb]

In college, I was the guy to go to if you had a computer problem. One night, one of the football players comes knocking on my door, "Hey Mark, my computer's acting weird, can you come look at it?" I agreed and we walked down the hall to his room. Strangely, the machine was off so I reached my hand out and turned it on. I jumped back at the sound of a loud pop and the sight of flames and smoke coming out of the back of the power supply. Immediately, I reached for the cord and pulled the plug.

"So can you fix it," he asks in all seriousness. I just looked at him in total disbelief and said, "Man, your computer was just on fire. No, I can't fix it."

He was really good at football though! :-)

$20000

[digitalchinky]

Come on, you don't need $20000 test equipment to push a tiny little power supply to the edge of its existance. The first paragraph looks more like a marketing scam.

A nice old 3 inch nail bent up and jammed into the plugs for a few seconds should sort the good supplies from the bad :-)

Re:/.'d already

[An Anonymous Crowbar]

Probably power-failure.

Home Cooking

[Uptown Joe]

I owned a Computer Store for 6 years that specialized in hardware service... We would refer to computers that had popped power supplys or "burnt" motherboards as "Home Cooking".

110v+220v=LOUD BANG

[Savage-Rabbit]

I always stress the importance of getting a good power supply when I give advice for building PCs....

Personally I'm happy if I can teach users to remember to switch the powersupply from 110 to 220 volts when recieving computers from bought in the USA before plugging them into a 220v power outlet. I still have trouble not laughing out loud every time one of those ebay jockeys shows up with a PC/MAC that has a burned out powersupply. It must be really frustrating to buy a PC/MAC for a shitload of money and then damage or completely ruin it because you forgot to flip one little red switch.

Re:110v+220v=LOUD BANG

[Spacejock]

Man, I remember an Atari ST enthusiast back in 1987. He owned the only ST shop in town, and he imported about AUD$14,000 worth of gear for demo purposes (big HD, controller cards, etc - this was before Atari Megadrives. My Megadrive cost me around AUD$1750, so that kind of dough wasn't excessive.) He hooked up a DX7 keyboard with midi cables, both monitors (via switchbox), laser printer ... the whole works.

Then he plugged it in and fired it up.

Pity the external hard drive transformer was 110v, and Aussie power is 240.

A year or so later he could laugh about the way the drive heads were fused to the platters when he opened it up for a look. At the time he was somewhat distraught.

Another less expensive tale - the tech at a computer shop I used to work for ordered in an 80mb hard drive for a customer in the days when 20mb was the standard. (yes - MB. It was a long time ago...) This thing cost around AUD$800 (about US$600 at current prices), and unfortunately the molex socket on the drive was quite flexible and his glasses weren't quite strong enough. So he put the Molex power plug in upside down.

End result: I found him wreathed in magic blue smoke, explaining to the distributor that a sudden fault had arisen with the new and very expensive hard drive.