If your computer is behaving strangely or randomly crashing, it can be hard to nail down the culprit. Testing your power supply should be part of your troubleshooting, it might be on the way out. This tutorial will show you how.

Symptoms of a failing computer power supply 

There are a few tell-tale signs of a computer power supply that may be failing. Unfortunately, many of them are very general and could be a number of things. 

1. Random computer crashes.
2. Random blue screen crashes.
3. Extra noise coming from the PC case.
4. Recurring failure of PC components.
5. PC won’t start but your case fans spin.

As you can see, those symptoms could have many possible causes. A failing PSU is just one of many. I tend to troubleshoot other hardware first and the power supply last.

How to test your PSU to see if it is dead or alive 

Testing for a faulty power supply is a process of elimination. The process isn’t exhaustive but should give you a good idea of whether your PSU is working properly or not.

If you have performed software troubleshooting and think the issue may be hardware, follow these steps. Retest after each step.

1. Make sure any external switch on the rear of the power supply hasn’t accidentally been turned off.
2. Check the power cable is secure in the wall socket and rear of the computer.
3. Try a different power cable and wall socket to make sure neither is dead.
4. Check all internal connections inside your PC, especially power connectors to peripherals.
5. Remove all peripherals and hardware from your computer except your boot drive and graphics card if you don’t have onboard graphics. If your CPU does have built-in graphics, remove the graphics card also.

Wrapping up

Troubleshooting a power supply problem is not always as straightforward as first may appear. Double-check all your tests before deciding to replace your PSU.

For more information contact Ryan Danvers of ABACON IT on 072 601 2858