Bought a cheap PSU tester on Amazon and it lied to me

Picked up one of those $15 PSU testers from Amazon to speed up diagnostics. Plugged in a dead power supply and it showed all green lights so I almost sent the customer home with a bad unit. Lost about 2 hours chasing down the real issue before I tested with a multimeter. Anyone else ever get tricked by a cheap tester tool?

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walker.michael5mo ago

Blame the tool not the tech who bought the cheapest option around.

6

faithf775mo ago

Got burned by the exact same thing last month. Picked up one of those cheap red board testers with the LCD screen and it showed all green on a unit that had zero power on the 12v rail when I checked with my Fluke. Spent a whole afternoon swapping out ram and drives before I realized the tester was just lighting up random LEDs. Never trusted those things again after that, always double check with a meter now.

5