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Repair Tech Notes: Warehouses are holding on to warranty return units because it costs too much shipping back and forth to a factory repair center, plus the factory’s repair costs. Electronic waste recycler’s want to be paid to take electronics. For these reasons unit factory production dates can vary a lot on warranty returns. Anything that is wrong with the power supplies is what will be fixed: electronics, manufacturer’s defects, missing labels, damaged connectors, cables, dents and very rare occurring high frequency noises. With warranty return units bad capacitors, fan problems, dirt, dust are all extremely rare. Our repaired units are all inspected and tested 2-3 times going through the repair process. Anything that does not meet our "like new" standards will not be sold. There are no DOA or defectives when these units are shipped out. All units receive a new warranty seal and we will add a serial number if manufacturer omitted serial numbers. 

Troubleshooting a power supply... Many power supplies are equipped with over current protection, over power protection and short protection. That old power supply may have shutdown because some other part in the computer failed and is shorted out, in this situation most power supplies will not provide any power as that would cause the power supply to also fail. There are many protections built into power supplies that will shutdown power output such as over voltage protection, over current protection, overload protection, short protection. These protections are to prevent the power supply from burning out because some other computer part failed. Without a tester or before purchase, with the power supply disconnected from the computer take a paperclip and on the CPU connector jump green to any black (see CPU 20+4 connector pin out image above), this is the turn on power supply signal, does fan kick or run? Use a DMM (Digital Multi-Meter) to check voltages yellow wire +12V, red +5v, orange +3.3v. Without a DMM if the cooling fan is running the power supply is most likely working okay. If this is all good and the power supply appears to not be working when connected to the computer, some part is shorted or or burned out in the computer. What to check next; top two failures that cause shorts and failures in computers are video cards that require a PCI-E connection as these video cards contain their own power supply which often fails. The computers main board contains a power supply for the CPU this next most often failure. Other parts are a lot less likely to fail. Note that only really old power supplies, like 1999 and older had that -5v output, on current years power supplies there is a missing white wire and pin on the 20-pin CPU connector that is where the -5v would be if new power supplies still had that -5v output.  On the tester included -5v led will not come on unless power supply actually has a -5v output. The ATX tester will accept all current connector plugs, the plug that is needed for testing is the 20-pin cpu connector.