Antec ATX12V power supply tester review

Power supply support

The Antec ATX12V tester will work with any 20- or 24-pin ATX power supply. It won't work with AT power supplies (or any other non-ATX PSUs) at all.

Click here for a picture of the Antec ATX12V PSU tester in action.

Physical design

The device has only one socket for power supply input, which is where the main motherboard power connector goes. Through this socket, all of the different power rails are tested; there is no need to test Molex (hard drive/CDROM/floppy) connectors because they come off of the same +5v and +12v rails that the motherboard gets. Of course this also means that the Antec ATX12V power supply tester cannot verify the integrity of all of the wires and connectors -- only the power output from the main ATX connector. So if you have a bad Molex connector or drive power cable, this tool will not find it.

There are two rubber grips on either side of the unit, making it easy to hold onto while you're inserting and removing power cables. Five 3-color LEDs show through the top of the tester, providing the test results for each rail. All green lights means that the PSU is good; red lights mean that a voltage reading is too high; orange means that the rail is too low. Each rail has its own LED indicator, so you can see which rail in specific is failing. Two "idiot" LEDs are below the rail LED array, showing a large green light when all of the rails test good, a red light when there is a failure, and both red and green when the PSU is borderline.

A handy extra on the bottom of the Antec ATX12V tester is a connector block for multimeter leads. Using a multimeter, you can individually test the +3.3v, +5v, and +12v rails to see their exact output.

Summary

I've seen other PSU testers in my day, most of them crudely designed. The Antec ATX12V power supply tester is the first one I've seen that is professionally designed. It has all the features you could ask for in a PSU tester -- individual rail indicators, a power good indicator, support for both 20- and 24-pin ATX PSUs, and a connector block for multimeter leads. It's a welcome addition to my tool box, and eliminates the need for an extra power supply for testing (a solution that takes much more time and provides much less accuracy). Every computer technician -- and anyone else who regularly has to troubleshoot computer hardware -- should have one of these.