About 2 months ago my PC croaked. It would start up and immediately shut down. The CPU had been running hot so I replaced it. No help. So I yanked the Antec SP-500 power supply to test it. I shorted pins 14-15 to get it to turn on.
With no load the voltages are what they're supposed to be. So I tried loading it down with some big (>100W) resistors from work. Below is the setup
Pins 14-15 shorted
2 ohm resistor across pins 10-15 (the +12V line)
.75 ohm resistor across pins 1-15 (the 3.3V line)
.75 ohm resistor across pins 6-15 (the +5V line)
A 10 ohm resistor across the 12V line on the 4 pin mobo power connector.
A fluke multimeter to measure the voltages.
I didn' t load the -12V line since the spec says the minimum current draw is 0 A.
All the other lines should be drawing more than their minimum (.5 A) and much less than their maximums.
When I fire it up the 3.3V line goes down to 1.3 V, the 12V line drops to 10.6V, and the 5V line drops to 3V. So I figured the power supply was dead. Just to verify my results I applied the loads to another power supply that I know is OK and got about the same result. So there must be something wrong with my setup. What could be wrong?
Thanks,
Apchar
With no load the voltages are what they're supposed to be. So I tried loading it down with some big (>100W) resistors from work. Below is the setup
Pins 14-15 shorted
2 ohm resistor across pins 10-15 (the +12V line)
.75 ohm resistor across pins 1-15 (the 3.3V line)
.75 ohm resistor across pins 6-15 (the +5V line)
A 10 ohm resistor across the 12V line on the 4 pin mobo power connector.
A fluke multimeter to measure the voltages.
I didn' t load the -12V line since the spec says the minimum current draw is 0 A.
All the other lines should be drawing more than their minimum (.5 A) and much less than their maximums.
When I fire it up the 3.3V line goes down to 1.3 V, the 12V line drops to 10.6V, and the 5V line drops to 3V. So I figured the power supply was dead. Just to verify my results I applied the loads to another power supply that I know is OK and got about the same result. So there must be something wrong with my setup. What could be wrong?
Thanks,
Apchar