Power supply repair number two, for me, is repairing a unit I’ve had for years, and “works”, but frequently, it will power up the the computer, then almost immediately power it back off, and require flipping the switch on the power supply off and on to get it back “working”. This behavior is indicative of either the Over or Under Voltage/Current latch kicking in (this could be semi-confirmed by unplugging fans, or hard drives from the power supply, and it would start up much more reliably). If the unit did successfully power up, it would run the computer with no problems for weeks/months at a time (I had the unit powering an IPTV box for 6 months previous to teardown for repair). Testing with my Dr. Power II shows everything is fine, but the tester only puts a couple ohms of load on the unit. Real testing requires an actual PC load (or a much larger load than I can provide with my Reload:Pro). Opening the unit, I found that several of the solder joints between the output wiring, and the “jacks” for attaching cables looked “cold” or “dry” (meaning, non-good solder connections) (See picture here). This can certainly lead to protection kicking in on devices. Reflowing these connections took a bit of time due to the thermal mass of the wiring and connection board, but after, the connections did look much better. Testing again showed everything was fine (as before). Hooking the unit back up to a real PC showed consistent power up. Calling this one fixed, for now.
