Power Supply Unit


Posted on Feb 5, 2014

This article provides a detailed description of our methodology for testing power supplies in three major parts. The first one lists PSU parameters we check out and specifies the test conditions. In the second section you`ll find terms often voiced by PSU manufacturers for marketing purposes and their definitions. The third part will be most inter


Power Supply Unit
Click here to download the full size of the above Circuit.

esting for people who`d like to know how our PSU testbed is designed and operates. In our PSU tests our main task is to check it out at different loads, up to the maximum one. Many reviewers used to employ an ordinary PC for that purpose, installing the tested PSU into it. This method had two drawbacks: you had no control over the amount of power consumed by the PC, and it was hard to load a really high-wattage PSU. The second problem is especially crucial today when the PSU manufacturers have started a race for reaching as high a wattage rating as possible, and the capabilities of their products have by far exceeded the demands of a typical PC. Of course, one may argue that there`s no point in testing PSUs at higher loads if no real PC needs more than 500W, but it would be odd not to check out a high-wattage PSU through its entire load range if we begin to test it at all. We use an adjustable load with programmable control to test PSUs in our labs. The testbed is based on the well-known feature of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs): a MOSFET limits the current flowing in the drain-source circuit depending on the voltage in the gate. Above you can see a simple schematic of a MOSFET-based current regulator: connecting the circuit to a PSU with an output voltage of +V and turning the lever of the variable resistor R1 we are changing the voltage on the gate of the transistor VT1 thus changing the...




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