Diagnostics first or part swap first? My last 3 calls made me pick a side

So I've been going back and forth on this for a while. When a machine comes in with a dead mobo or no POST, do you grab your multimeter and start tracing voltages, or do you just swap the likely part and see what happens? Last Tuesday in Charlotte I spent 40 minutes testing a PSU with a $25 tester only to find it was fine, then the board was toast. But the week before, I swapped a CMOS battery on a whim and skipped all testing, fixed it in 5 minutes. Time is money on the road, but bad guesses burn customer trust too. Has anyone figured out a rule for when to stop testing and just throw parts at it?

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1 Comment

emma_young15h agoTop Commenter

Man, I feel this. My rule is simple, if the part is cheap and easy to get to, I'll throw it in blind. But if you're talking a board or a PSU, you test first, because eating that return cost kills your margin way worse than the extra 20 minutes of diag.