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Power Supply Dummy Load & Tester

As you may know the original PC/XT/AT PSU would not kick on without a load. In fact the original 5170 without HDD came with a "load" mounted in the HDD cage to allow the AT to start. Without the load a perfectly good PSU won't start and will appear dead. You can usually achieve the required load with a FH HDD.

As for the tester it is cool, and to be honest I have not seen any PSU testers for AT PSUs, but I wonder if there is 75 dollars worth of work/parts in it. Others can give you a better idea as I could be wrong on that assumption. Ultimately though it is a product looking for a market. I.E. how many PSUs do you have that need testing? Now if it was under $20 (like the LCD ATX PSU tester I recently picked up) I'd buy one just because it looks cool, seems well designed and thought out, and it is unique but at $75 it is a "luxury" item to me.

Edit: To his credit he provides all the info on his site so you can build your own. Unfortunately the part list is in PDF format so you can't just upload it to Mouser to get a price for parts.
 
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Like Shadow Lord said, It's more of a luxury item than a necessity for me too, Some PSU's require less of a load than others to start up and some require no extra load to start albeit the outputs won't be optimal until a load is connected, Personally i'd rather use a known good load and DMM to read the outputs under varying load conditions and time. I'm not knocking it, It's just something that i don't really need. I guess it depends on your own circumstances ie: how often will it get used etc.
 
Depends what you're trying to do: Do you have a bunch of power supplies you need to test? Or is it only a few PS's? In later case you can as well get a few 25W resistors, connect them to the PS output, and measure voltage under the load.

The board appears to be well designed. And the author/seller has all the documentation including schematic and PCB files on his page. And if you'd make one yourself you'll probably save some money (or you can as well pay it to the guy that designed it, so he can buy himself a beer).
 
For that much, I'd want to see some go-no-go LEDs on the tester indicating if the PSU voltage was within some tolerance. If this were for wholesale PSU testing, those resistors would be from Kanthal-Globar (i.e. "soft start, non-inductive, overload-tolerant" carbon block units)
 
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So....

1. It's well designed.

2. Appears to be well made.

3. Some improvements and additional features would make it better.

4. But it's overpriced.

I do appreciate you guys taking the time to give me (and others reading) your input.

A friend of mine is a hobby blacksmith. Much of the stuff he makes are truly works of art. There is no way any of it would be commercially viable but very little of it is commercially available. I have noticed several of the hammers he uses to hand forge are from Home Depot. Like many things in life this is also a trade-off between available time and available money.
 
DDS said:
4. But it's overpriced.
Click to expand...

Maybe! Honestly to say it is overpriced you would have to figure out how much the components cost and then see how much is being charged for labor and profit.

For example, if it has $30 worth of components (due to small production run/purchasing single quantities vs. bulk) + $6 S&H + 15% eBay and PayPal fees then it may not be overpriced. However, it still is expensive. Like I said earlier, and people have echoed, how many PSUs do you need to test? 100s, 1000s? Then it maybe a worthwhile investment. 1? Not really worth it then (at least to me).

You could always build your own based on his instructions and part list or string something together for cheaper.
 
Chuck(G) said:
For that much, I'd want to see some go-no-go LEDs on the tester indicating if the PSU voltage was within some tolerance. If this were for wholesale PSU testing, those resistors would be from Kanthal-Globar (i.e. "soft start, non-inductive, overload-tolerant" carbon block units)
Click to expand...

It actually does have LEDs and apparently they suppose to indicate that voltage is within 10%.
 
DDS said:
So....
4. But it's overpriced.
Click to expand...

Overpriced! That was my first reaction too... but:
- Yes components are cheap, perhaps the screw terminals are the most expensive parts. But still the parts only would cost at least $20 or more likely about $30
- PCB - looks like he is using OSHPark made one - say for 4" x 3" size would cost about $20 piece ($60 for set of three)

Now guy put some work into designing it and building it....

So I don't think it is overpriced.
 
I think different people here are using "overpriced" in different context.
From the maker's perspective, it may not be overpriced (cost to produce [includes effort] + profit).
From a buyer's perspective, it may be overpriced (price relative to usefulness/need).
 
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