How to know if your Power Supply Unit (PSU) is failing

You have recently started facing a lot of odd issues with your computers and none of them are performance related but related to some very basic functionality such as turning the PC on or off.
If you are in this bracket then you might be facing a malfunctioning or at worst a dead Power Supply Unit or PSU, these days Switch Mode Power Supply or SMPS are used aswell.

First thing first how will you identify if its related to your PSU or not? The answer is simple if you are facing any of the issues below then you migh be in a need of a new replacement unit.

• System start-up failures or lockups: If your PC is not booting up even if you have pressed the power button with the monitor etc powered on or the boot up process halts/freezes mid way then you need to check your PSU for sure.
• PC takes a long time to shut down or Boot up: A noticeable change rather increase in the time that your system takes in booting up or shutting down is a very strong indication that the power unit is the culprit.
• Spontaneous rebooting or intermittent lockups during normal operation.
• Memory Errors: Your system shows memory allocation or process execution error multiple times quite frequently even during day to day work.
• Hard Disk Drive (HDD) fails: If you experience a total freeze and have to shut down the system by manually pressing the button followed by a no red blink of the LED on the cabinet then your HDD just stopped spinning telling you that it didn't receive the power required hence your PSU failed.
• Fan is not spinning: The fan just stopped spinning along with a over heated PC! That's a real bad news, shut it down quickly and get a new Power Supply for yourself.
• USB devices are not working: Especially those that rely on the USB port for power like an external HDD or a cell phone and even memory cards. Also you may experience a sudden freeze of operations on your system when you plug in these devices.
• Electric shocks that are felt when the case is touched
• BIOS beeping codes detected: This you'll face during the booting process when the computer POST, it'll beep multiple times and finally boot up or it might not even showing that their is insufficient power.
• Smoke: You see a little or lot of smoke coming out of your system that's an indication of over heating and a faulty power supply can strongly be the root cause.

All these symptoms indicate strongly to a faulty power supply in your system, so if you are facing any of these then do put your PSU/SMPS on the troubleshooting checklist.
Always choose a good PSU/SMPS for your system so that it stays stable and can power all your components. I hope this article served your purpose, for any other query or to add something more to this article that I might've missed upon ,do leave a comment.