Pro tip: I thought those cheap usb power testers were junk, but one just saved a laptop repair

I had a guy bring in a gaming laptop that would not charge at all. I was ready to order a new dc-in board, but I plugged in a little $15 power meter I got online a while back. It showed the charger was putting out the right voltage, but the current draw was jumping all over the place. That pointed me right to a shorted capacitor on the main board near the charging circuit. Fixed it in an hour. Anyone else find a simple tool that turned out to be way more useful than you expected?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliashah19d ago

My buddy used a cheap thermal camera to find a hot spot on a dead motherboard. Saved him from replacing the whole thing.

abbyg6018d ago

What kind of camera did he use? That's a really smart trick!

the_mila18d ago

Yeah, my cousin did something similar with his old laptop. He found a single overheating voltage regulator with a borrowed camera and just swapped that tiny part. The whole machine booted right up after that.