Checking the power supply of a Windows 10 PC is a quick and easy process. There are two ways to do this, one is by using the power button on the PC and the other is by going through Settings.
There are two ways to check if your power supply is working correctly on Windows 10. One way is to use the Power button on your PC, while another way is to go through Settings. The first option can be found in Control Panel as well as in the Power and Sleep menu that appears when you right-click on your desktop.
The first thing to do is to power off the PC. Turn the PC on its side and look for a small hole next to the power supply.
You can use a paper clip or a needle to poke inside this hole and see if there is any power running through it. If there is no power, you need to check your cables and make sure they are all connected properly.
If they are, you need to replace your power supply.
Method Two
First, open the Task Manager by right-clicking your taskbar and selecting “Task Manager,” or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc. If you don’t see the full Task Manager pane, click “More Details” at the bottom.
How do You Check Your PC Power Supply?
This information appears on the Processes pane but is hidden by the small size of the window. For you to know how to check the power supply on windows 10, you need to Enlarge the window by clicking and dragging at the corner until you see the Power Usage and Power Usage Trend columns, or scroll to the right. You can also drag and drop the headings to reorder the list of columns.
If you don’t see these columns, right-click the headings here and enable the “Power Usage” and “Power Usage Trend” columns. If these options don’t appear in the list, you haven’t upgraded to the October 2018 Update yet.
Each process has a value under these columns. The Power Usage column tells you how much power the process is using at this exact moment, while the Power Usage Trend column shows you the longer-term trend. You can click the columns to sort by either type of power usage.
For example, a process might currently not be using much power at this very moment, but might be using a lot of power in general. Or, a process might be using a lot of power right now, but it tends to use very little power. Focus on the trend for a better idea of how much power a process uses.
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How Do I Check My Power Supply Windows 10?
Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t give you precise numbers here. It just gives you a rough idea of power usage, which should be “Very Low” for most processes on your system. If a process is using more power than that—especially if it’s running in the background—you may want to quit that process to save battery power on your laptop or tablet.
Microsoft hasn’t explained exactly what the various words here mean. We don’t know the precise difference between “Very low” and “Low. How to check power supply wattage without opening PC will be explained here in the Nine steps below. Look at the exposed faces of the power supply unit for a sticker or label that describes the unit’s electrical capacities.
This label is required to be placed on all ATX form factor computer power supplies. It will designate how many amps are available for each voltage type and give a “watts max” designation.
- Step 1
Unplug your case from any electrical source and press the power button for 10 seconds to ensure any stored electrical charge is dissipated.
- Step 2
Remove the thumbscrews from the rear face of the case that holds the computer’s side access panel in place, and pull the side access panel back with light force to remove it from the case.
- Step 3
Locate your power supply within your case. It will be located against the rear wall of the case, either at the very top or the very bottom.
- Step 4
Use light force to slide your power supply forward toward the front of your case where your hard drives and optical drives are located.
- Step 5
Pull your now semi-free power supply outward away from the case. Take care not to pull too hard or fast, because all your components are still connected to your power supply.
- Step 6
Manipulate the drive and check every face for a specifications label. Once you find it, check the wattage rating as explained in step 5 of the previous section.
- Step 7
Reposition your power supply into its original position, and remount it with the four mounting screws you removed earlier.
- Step 8
Replace the female plug removed earlier from the rear of the power supply back into place.
- Step 9
Reassemble the case as detailed in steps 6 and 7 of the previous section.
List of Top 5 Power Supply Test Software
There are top 5 power supply best software that can be of help to you on how to check power supply on pc windows 10.
Testing your computer’s power supply is an essential step when you’re troubleshooting lots of issues, and this is the most useful when your system is having trouble starting.
A failed power supply can be at the root of all kinds of problems, some of which you may not even expect such as spontaneous reboots, random lockups, and even severe error messages.
The power supply is one of the most common hardware parts to fail in a computer. We picked up the best five programs that allow you to test your system’s power supply just to make sure that everything works as it should, take a look at these test computer power supply tools. Finally, choose the one that seems to be able to work best for you.
AIDA64 Extreme (recommended)
AIDA64 Extreme is an advanced system diagnostics utility that is able to gather essential data of your system’s hardware and software configuration as well. You’ll get accurate information revolving around the computer’s power supply and more.
Check out other exciting features that come with AIDA64 Extreme:
- The software allows you to test the capabilities of the system’s memory, FPU, and CPU by running complex benchmarks.
- The setup process is fast and straightforward.
- AIDA64 Extreme comes with a user0friendly interface with an organized layout.
- All the computer component-related data are broken down into separate categories.
- The information covers general areas of your system such as power management, sensors, and overclocking.
- The tool runs benchmarks and generates reports.
Regarding this tool’s configuration options, you can change the layout order, point out the folder for your reports, enable email notification when performing benchmarks, add custom components to the list, filter event logs, and so on.
This software is designed to help you on how to check the power supply on pc windows 10 and for more advanced users due to its extensive set of sophisticated features.
You can download AIDA64 Extreme and see how it works with your system. If you are interested in even more features, you can also check out AIDA64 Engineer, AIDA64 Business Edition, and also AIDA64 Network Audit on the same website.
Open Hardware Monitor
Open Hardware Monitor is a free open source tool that can monitor temperature sensors, fan speeds, load, voltages, and clock speeds of your system.
This program supports the most hardware monitoring chips that you will find on today’s mainboards.
Check out the best features included in this software:
- You will be able to check your system’s power supply accurately.
- The CPU temperature can be monitored by reading the core temperature sensors of AMD and Intel processors.
- The tool can also display the sensors of ATI and Nvidia video cards and the SMART, hard drive temperature as well.
- The monitored values will be displayed in the main window, in the system tray, or a customizable desktop gadget.
This software is compatible with all versions of Windows and if you are interested to find out more impressive features and in-depth details regarding its functionalities you should head over to the Open Hardware Monitor official website and get this tool.
HWMonitor
HWMonitor is a lightweight system monitoring tool. This hardware monitoring software will read your system’s primary health sensors for the most common chips.
It will also scan your hard drive’s temperatures. Check out its essential features:
- HWMonitor’s job is to keep track of the most critical sensors on your computer and find out live readings for the HDD temperature and fan speed.
- It provides accurate data regarding your power supply.
- Setting up the program is an effortless task, and it will not require any particular configuration.
- It comes with a straightforward interface, and it will automatically start monitoring the sensors at startup.
- It lists all the components in a hierarchical order so that you’ll be able to sport them easier.
- It provides data revolving around the CPU, GPU, and HDD.
- All the data can be exported to a plain text document if you want to check it out later and compare values with your future reports.
- The detailed reports include processor times, thread dumps, store data for each one of your drives, USB devices, graphics APIs, and more information.
This tool provides a simple solution to find out live readings for the sensors of your system. You will find additional features included in the paid version HWMonitor Pro on the official website of HWMonitor.
Sidebar Diagnostics
When it comes to analyzing the resource consumption figures and more elaborated hardware information, Windows itself provides a competent tool named Resource Monitor.
This utility has all the basics covered when it comes to data about the system’s memory, CPU, disk, and network stats but it’s not entirely convenient when you have tons of running apps.
Sidebar Diagnostics, on the other hand, provides a more convenient solution for viewing and analyzing hardware data.
Check out its best features below:
- This is a lightweight tool that does mainly what the native Resource Monitor does, but it displays data more attractively.
- It comes with a sidebar that is integrated into your desktop.
- The setup process is really a minimalist one, and you’ll see a useful Initial Setup screen.
- After completing the configuration process, the tool will accommodate itself within the system tray.
- It displays data about RAM, CPU, GOU, active drivers, power supply, network, and more.
- The tool is really customizable allowing you to set things according to your preferences.
Overall, Sidebar Diagnostics is an efficient tiny tool that manages to be both useful and unobtrusive at the same time. Download it to find out more functionalities that are included in the program.
PC Wizard
This is a system analyzer that’s very effective at dissecting your system, offers you the truth about its performance, and also offers you a chance how to check the power supply on pc windows 10. It’s able to explore the insides of your computer and provide you the complete data about both its strengths and weaknesses.
Check out the main features of this useful tool for monitoring power supply and more:
- It shows the processor’s activity, and it offers loads of benchmark possibilities.
- After you launch this program, it will take a bit of time in order to detect all the hardware that’s installed on your computer.
- You can use the left side of the interface to navigate through various categories.
- The PC Wizard will reveal all the essential details of your hardware and more.
- It also analyzes system files, and it investigates the configuration of elements such as the Control Panel and your Internet connection.
- The best thing about PC Wizard is its benchmarking tool, and the program excels the most in this area.
- You will be able to inspect anything from CPUs, cache, RAM, and multimedia.
PC Wizard is more efficient than fun, but this won’t be a problem if you’re looking for a useful tool to analyze the hardware data including the information about your power supply.
It’s a pretty sophisticated program targeted mostly at more advanced users. You can check out more features of PC Wizard by downloading the tool to see how it works.
What is Power Supply Calculator
In this section, you’ll learn what a power supply calculator means, how it works, and many more.
If you’re new to PC building, the chances are, your knowledge of components wattage is going to be fairly limited. Using a PSU calculator is going to take any of the stress that comes with choosing the right PSU away from the build process.
It not only recommends the required wattage for your build but also offers up some of the best PSU options for each specific price point. The PSU calculator really does make your life a whole lot easier.
How Your PSU Can Affect Gaming Performance
The most important components in a gaming PC are the CPU and GPU. But these components, just like all the others, need adequate power to operate. If your power supply can only provide 80% of the power your GPU needs, it can’t just simply run at 80% performance. Instead, the system will be unable to run at all and will likely crash.
So, if you’re working with a PSU that can’t support the rest of your build, all that hard work you put into building your gaming PC will be for nothing.
But, that’s not all. If you’re working with an unstable power supply, you run the risk of damaging your components permanently. That’s why we always recommend choosing a PSU that has a higher efficiency rating.
Upgrading Your PSU
One thing to remember, as, with all PC components, you can always choose to upgrade your PSU. If you ever choose to upgrade your GPU, upgrading your PSU should be a priority too. You need to make sure you’re giving your GPU as much power as it needs to run properly, and you might even need to provide more PCIe power connections than your current PSU can provide – depending on the model.
But, don’t worry, upgrading your PSU is fairly simple and it can help you on how to check the power supply on pc windows 10.
You just need a screwdriver, some cable-management love, and patience. If our PSU calculator has told you that you need to upgrade, then all you need to do is follow these simple steps.
- Shut off power to your PC and remove the power cord
- Remove the side panel of your PC case to gain access to all the technical goodies inside
- Remove all PSU power cables and connections from your components
- Remove any other components that are obstructing your access to the PSU
- Remove the screws on the back of the PC that attach the power supply to the case and remove the entire power supply unit
- Once you’ve safely disposed of your old PSU, place your new, upgraded PSU into position
- Screw your new PSU in and put back any other removed components
- Reattach all the power cables so your PSU is properly installed
- Power on your PC to check all the connections are working
- Turn your PC back off, reattach the side panel and enjoy your new PC build