PSU 301 – Why PSUs always use protection

Your PC’s power supply unit has one job to do – and that’s convert the 240VAC AC mains power generated by the power utilities into DC power your PC components can munch on. The vast majority of the time, it all works smoothly, but on the rare occasion something electrically goes wrong in your PC, you want to know that problem won’t cause you even more grief. That’s the job of the myriad of protection systems inside PC PSUs. But what do these protection systems do? That’s what we look into this month.

Stuff happens

Mistakes are made, components die, computers fail – not often, hopefully, but it does