Before overloading a power supply we always test to see if over current protection (OCP) is active and at what current level it is triggered. To test this, we connected all cables that were connected to the power supply +12V1 rail to the load tester +12V1 input and started increasing current until the power supply would shut down. This happened when we tried to pull 22 A or more from it, meaning that OCP on +12V1 rail is configured at this value.

Then starting from test five we increased currents to the maximum we could with the power supply still running inside ATX specs. If we tried to increase one amp ripple would go to the roof, meaning that the unit stopped working correctly. Also after more or less 30 seconds running on this configuration the same thing happened, meaning that the maximum we could extract was only “peak power” and not “continuous power.”

The idea behind of overload tests is to see if the power supply will burn/explode and see if the protections from the power supply are working correctly. This power supply didn’t burn and when we tried to pull far more than it could deliver it would shut down, so this unit passed on this test.