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I've bought a new ATX PSU on the internet. I was planning to use it as a lab power supply and as soon as it arrived home I've tested it by shorting the green wire with a black wire. It worked for less than a second. As soon as I shorted the two wires the fan started to spin but it stopped shortly after. When I used the tester it showed me the same thing: when it boots each output reaches it's normal voltage (3,3V, 5V, 12V), and then it goes to 0V. What should I do to make it work?

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    It's not clear from your post if you did or not, but you need to leave the jumper in place for it to keep running. Are you sure the PSU is not just faulty? Have you tried it with an actual ATX motherboard yet?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Dec 29, 2015 at 17:27
  • what kind of "tester"?
    – Moab
    Dec 29, 2015 at 17:33
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    I've cutted the green and black wires, tied them together and it still doesn't work. It may be faulty but by now the warranty is already gone. Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything that could make it work. I don'd have a motherboard to try it out but it doesn't do a thing even if I apply a decent load to the 5v rail.
    – Matei Aux Creanga
    Dec 29, 2015 at 17:36
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    I used a digital multimeter
    – Matei Aux Creanga
    Dec 29, 2015 at 17:37
  • related reading: electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/186366
    – Yorik
    Dec 29, 2015 at 18:43

3 Answers 3

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Attaching that green wire to (any) black should do it (as you expect). If it's behaving as you describe then I would file it under "G" for garbage and go get another ATX PSU.

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I managed to find the problem. I'll try connecting them back and try agai. Who knows? Maybe I'm still lucky after all?Look at theese resistors: two of them are disconnected from the board.

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You should quit trying to break your own equipment. Why are you trying to send electricity to somewhere that it's not supposed to go?

If we want to protect against external electrical problems, then a Surge Protector can offer some protection (against "surges"-- too much electricity), and an Uninterruptible Power Supply can protect against some more things (like "brownouts" that may supply inferior amounts of electricity). The purpose of an ATX Power Supply Unit is not to do these things. The purpose of such a Power Supply Unit is to convert Alternating Current to Direct Current.

If a Power Supply Unit does have some super basic protection, and I'm not even saying that it does this, then I would expect that to be a nice little bonus. However, if your testing has any likely effect, the effect would be to use up whatever protection may exist.

Don't break your unit by testing just how much you can mistreat it. I can understand doing some hardware testing. Crossing wires of different colors is beyond what a normal consumer should be doing.

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    By shorting the green and black wires you don't "send electricity" anywhere. It's the same thing that a normal PC does when you boot it up.
    – Matei Aux Creanga
    Dec 29, 2015 at 17:40
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    I may be losing something here, but since when using a voltmeter for a voltage measurement actually damages an appliance?
    – Matei Aux Creanga
    Dec 29, 2015 at 17:49
  • As I understand, shorting means to alter the path that electricity would flow, thereby sending it on a different path. I don't expect proper measuring to cause damage. However, there are four sentences in the question before any mention of a "tester". (I answered before the later comment about a multimeter.) I'm simply not making an assumption that you're familiar with safe process, as you gave no indication you were following that. (The typos "shoter" and unquoted "3,3" did not instill additional confidence.) As far as I could tell, you may have just been crossing wires.
    – TOOGAM
    Dec 29, 2015 at 21:19

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