Save your electronics and save your money by making this small investment. You won’t regret knowing how to recover quickly from inevitable electronics failure.
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Save Your Electronics…from PSU Failure
Every year, millions of people needlessly lose their hard earned money to replacing failed electronics. Often times they are the unknowing victims of PSU failure. Stick around and I’ll show you how you can save yourself and others for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day for a month.
What the heck is PSU failure? It is not uncommon for the PSU or power supply unit aka the power adapter to fail making one think that their electronics device has failed and they must replace the whole unit. I was just recently faced with this situation and luckily I was equipped to diagnose the problem, minimize my down time, and save over $400. All by having one of these and one of these. Now I’m going to explain how all of this works, but just know that if you have any questions feel free to put those in the comments down below. Also, I will link to these products (see Tools and Materials) so you can easily find them and lastly, please support Toolbox DIY by clicking subscribe and then the notification bell.
Okay, you see power supplies are usually cheap pieces of crap. I’m not going to lie. The electronics manufacturer’s don’t make these, they buy them in bulk and the lowest bidder wins. Besides, if it fails out of warranty why do they care if you think you need to replace your entire piece of equipment? Sadly, it is all about the Benjamins and I’m going to teach you how to hold on to yours.
Digital Multimeters Are Your Friend (and Easy to Use)
Let’s start with this intimidating looking device. This is a digital multimeter used to take all kinds of electrical measurements. If you don’t know anything about electricity or electronics, this can very intimidating, but don’t worry. You only need to know one thing about this device…how to measure DC voltage. You see on every power supply unit, there’s a sticker that tells you the voltage that should be coming out of the end of this. We are going to use this meter to determine if the power supply is doing it’s job or not.
First we connect our red and black leads to the meter. Black goes to the only black connector and red goes to the red connector that has a +V and bunch of other symbols that you don’t care about. After that we turn on the meter by turning the knob to the big V. There’s one more step though that big V is for A/C voltage and we need D/C voltage so we press this orange button and we see the wavy line go to a straight line. Now we’re on D/C.
Next, we insert the red probe into the center of what’s called the barrel of the connector and then we touch the black lead to the outside of the barrel and we not our measurement. We see here we’re at less than 100 millivolts which is not a good thing. This power supply says it is supposed to output 5.3V! It clearly is not so the $420 device that this thing powers is not actually broken and I don’t have to replace it. Let’s take a look at the voltage on the replacement power supply. Perfect!
Universal Power Adapter…is Your Other Friend!
After you diagnose the problem though, you have to wait to find your replacement and get it shipped. Sometimes we can’t afford the downtime which is why I also recommend having one of these around. This is a universal power supply that lets you select the voltage and it comes with different sized barrel tips. While this is usually a suitable replacement power supply for many devices, I recommend making this a temporary replacement. These are a bit more expensive so I keep one around the house and I only use it until my replacement power supply comes. It works like this, select the voltage you need. I needed 5.3V but as you can see that’s not an option so I select the closest voltage which is 5V. I find the right tip and then I test it out. If it works, I know it was only my power supply that failed and the electronic device is just fine.
Also, if your universal power supply doesn’t have a tip that matches the one you need to replace, you can cut off the old one and reuse it. This power supply comes with a tip that allows you to insert wire leads. So we cut off the tip of our old power supply and strip the wires. We need to know which wires are positive and negative so we can use another feature of our multimeter. Move the dial to what looks like a speaker and next to it is the Greek letter Omega (the symbol for Ohms – the unit of measure for electrical resistance – but you don’t need to know that to do this!). We put a probe on the outside of the barrel and then touch each wire. When we hear a beep, we know that’s the negative wire. We can then connect our old tip to wire lead tip.
Save Your Electronics…by Getting a Replacement Power Adapter
Next I go to my old power supply and look for the part number and do a search to see if I can buy a replacement on-line. Sometimes, it’s not that easy and you have to search based on the voltage, the current or amps, and the barrel size. Some power supplies state the barrel size, others do not. You might need to measure this. Just know that it is measured in millimeters. Lastly, you need to pay attention to what is called the polarity of the barrel. Most modern supplies have positive in the center connector but not all. Just make sure your plus signs match on the old and new power supplies.
It is sometimes difficult to find power supplies from most online retailers. This electronic components supplier has a nice search tool to help you match all your specifications and find a suitable replacement.
Now that you know how to diagnose the power supply, go get yourself one of these and one of these so you are prepared. And enjoy that extra cash you’ll keep in your pocket!
I hope you found this useful. Don’t forget to subscribe, like, comments, etc. and as always I’m Chris with Toolbox DIY. Thanks for watching.
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