Mother board test gadget from Wal Mart.

[Dottonedan]

I am needing the name of that basic tool that a few of you computer techs mentioned. The one that any computer repaire guy worth their salt would know about that you can get from Wal Mart that can tell you if your Mother Board is bad.   I tried this am to find the thread where that was at but don't see it.

Anyone remember what that is?   

[mk162]

multi tester or volt-ohm meter

they should be in the automotive department, or electrical

[ScreenFoo]

Yep, Harbor Freight has a coupon this month for a free one. 

Mobos are rough, because it could be the memory, or the memory controller (on the mobo)--could be the video card, could be the bus (on the mobo), etc.

This looks like a pretty good article--since it has safety info.   
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/power-supply-test-multimeter.htm

The one thing that makes me wonder in this article, is that most switching power supplies I've screwed around with require some load to ramp up voltage--you may have to hook up a hard drive or some such (just the power side) to give it the required load.  Perhaps newer PSU's are not like this.  YMMV

[Gilligan]

Harbor freight will have some for DIRT cheap that will work for your purposes.

They are good to have for EVERYTHING.

You can test an outlet in your house, check a fuse, blah blah blah.

Grab you a clamp meter like this one

http://www.harborfreight.com/digital-clamp-meter-96308.html

And you can use it to test amperage draw on things (dryers, flash cures... helps to troubleshoot things and doesn't cost you much more).  You need to get the clamp around just one wire of the two (hot and neutral) so if you want to test regular appliances (say a refrigerator) you would need to take a power strip or extension cord and cut the jacket back to expose the different wires in there (they will have their own jackets so it is relatively safe)... then you can clamp around that and use that to put inline with anything you want to check out.

I did that to a cord that goes to the back of the PC so I could test how much my server was drawing and could hook it to anything that took that sort of connector... I want to build a little pig tail extension cord for just that and put it on anything... just haven't gotten around to it.

[Frog]

I believe that this was a suggestion to check the power supply, not the motherboard.

[inkman996]

Yep Andy a simple Fluke multi meter can test a PSU inboard in seconds versus trouble shooting by process of elimination. I really have no idea if it is even possible to test a MOBO with out some very sophisticated equipment.

[Gilligan]

I'm still a fan of process of elimination.

I have a PSU that has a busted electrical connection (just the housing) so I can't use it on anything other than my own gear or as a test PSU... so that's what I do with it.  I just let it hang out of the side and see if it fixes the issue... 30 seconds and I'm done.

[ScreenFoo]

Yep, should have been more clear--the PSU is what you can test with a multimeter, for sure.  If you get fancy, you could see if power is getting to different parts of the motherboard, but considering the near impossibility of fixing a four or six layer motherboard in the field, it's not likely to be a very fruitful line of investigation. 

As far as motherboard testing goes, you can really only test with another computer of a similar build, or a similar bunch of parts, and a large amount of patience.

Kevin's got a great point too--you can get a nice PSU for well under a hundred bucks--either it fixes your problem, or it eliminates a new one when you buy that new computer with a junky power supply--and you switch it for the good one you bought.