is my power supply bad?

[brbpab94]

I just took a volt meter to the plug that plugs into my motherboard to test the voltage and I seem to be getting about 5 volts out of two of the twenty pins.This power supply is only about 3 months old.It's a cooler master I bought at compusa.I opened it and didn't see any bad capaciters or anything burnt.

[rich99million]

Re: is my power supply bad?

You should have 5V at any pin with a red cable, 3.3V at any pin with an orange cable, 12V at any pin with a yellow cable. All black cables should be 0V.

Is the PSU actually running or is it just plugged in?

[brbpab94]

Re: is my power supply bad?

I pluged it in and turned turned the switch in the back of it on.And I used the black wire as a ground.What is the proper way to test it?And what would you use for the ground.
When I plug it into the motherboard it turns on and the fans spin.I forget if the fan spins when its not pluged into the motherboard and I cant test it now because I'm out of state working and I'll be back Friday.

[rich99million]

Re: is my power supply bad?

When it's not connected to the motherboard you can fool it into starting up by shorting the green wire (PS_ON) to any of the black wires using a bent paperclip or something - this should be perfectly safe to do but be careful and don't kill yourself or damage anything :p

This won't stress the PSU at all though so you may be better off connecting it to the motherboard and testing it while running

As for ground any of the black wires should work fine

[tazwegion]

Re: is my power supply bad?

This power supply is only about 3 months old.It's a cooler master I bought at compusa.I opened it and didn't see any bad capaciters or anything burnt.

Well, if is faulty in anyway... you just voided your warranty by opening it

What's been happening to your system to make you think it could be a bad PSU issue?

[brbpab94]

Re: is my power supply bad?

I'm expecting it to post after I changed the three bad caps I found on the motherboard and it didn't seem to make a difference.D you think I should change the rest of the same size caps on the motherboard?

When I start the computer I looked in the back where the led code lights are and I cross refrence the to the manual and it tels me initializing ide drive controller and hangs there.The led's never change,it starts like that and stays.The similer thing happend before and I upgraded the power supply and it worked.Then I found this forum and I noticed bad caps .So I replaced the ones that went bad and tried that.

[linuxguru]

Re: is my power supply bad?

The other similar caps on the motherboard are also likely to be on their way out, so it's normally recommended that you change all caps of every series that is known to be bad, not just the bulging ones. Do that first, and then test with a known good PSU.