Price: $39.99



Introduction:

So things aren’t working right, your computer won’t boot, and you just can’t figure out what is going wrong. You don’t have any spare parts laying around that work, so now what? Trouble-shooting has been and always will be a pain in the butt. Any time you get a bunch of new hardware and something doesn’t work, it’s testing one thing after the next when trying to determine what the problem is.

Thermaltake though, seems to be leading us down the right path with their new Dr. Power II, an ATX PSU tester that only needs your PSU to test it. Perhaps you have a rail that just isn’t supplying enough power, or maybe your SATA drives aren’t being powered at all. This quick tester can either confirm you’ve got a dead or dying PSU, or it can mark one item from your rig off as not the problem in only a matter of seconds.

Today we take a look at Thermaltake’s Dr. Power II to see how it works and to check how well the PSU's I’ve got around here are working.

Closer Look:

The Dr. Power II comes in a small little box, something your old Game Boy classic might fit in. The packaging is printed in color with black, red, and white dominance, it also has a nice little hang tag for stores to use when displaying the tester. The front of the box gives you a quick peek at the large display and the back a quick glimpse at what parts you can test out, such as a 24-pin connector, PCI-E 6 pin or 8 pin, SATA, 4 pin Molex, and a CPU 4 pin or 8 pin connector. So regardless of the brand or model of PSU, the Dr. Power II ensures you can test it out.

The top of the box reads “Dr. Power II” as you are about to open it up, and I can’t help but think of Dr. Mario. However, that’s not quite what is inside the box. You’ll open it up to find a brief instruction guide and a lightweight plastic device with a LCD panel and single button. No need for batteries though, that PSU of yours is what makes it work. That is if your PSU isn’t completely dead.