Power supply aging

[ZZAC]

what's everyone's onion on how long to keep a power supply before getting rid of it incase it pops due to old age?in my system i have an enermax galaxy, this is dated 2005, and i bought it 8 months ago as faulty for £5, turned out it had a bad fan, witch was replaced and its been going strong since.whats everyone's opinion of me runnign on a psu i brought for a fiver witch is like 7 years old now? (correct me if im wrong in saying its 2005 but its between 2005-2006)

this power supply pulls like a train and is actually a combined total of 1046watts (iirc) , and is now powering a gtx 295 and i5, so a pretty power hungry system all in all.

I had a molex to 8 pin adapter melt on me as i have no 8 pins, but i have some in the post along with lots of braided cables (about £35 worth)

but yeah, what's the opinion on changing the power supply due to age?

 

[Firat]

I would defo reconnect changing it to a more modern psu, if it pops it will most likely take all your components with it! As it may not have surge protection and all the new tech present in today's PSUs to delivery clean power!!!

 

[Jason-CL]

I have a Corsiar Hx850 that's been running day and night for the last two years, without issue. The thing is a beast. More than anything, I find it necessary to spend money on a quality PSU over anything, it's a life or death matter when it comes to the rest of your hardware.

A good friend of mine had a 1000 watt Thermaltake PSU, and the damn thing died, taking with it all of his hard drives. This was just 3 weeks ago.

A good PSU, if it kicks the bucket, will typically do so by itself, leaving everything else you have to live.

 

[ZZAC]

I have a Corsiar Hx850 that's been running day and night for the last two years, without issue. The thing is a beast. More than anything, I find it necessary to spend money on a quality PSU over anything, it's a life or death matter when it comes to the rest of your hardware.

A good friend of mine had a 1000 watt Thermaltake PSU, and the damn thing died, taking with it all of his hard drives. This was just 3 weeks ago.

A good PSU, if it kicks the bucket, will typically do so by itself, leaving everything else you have to live.

Now this is what i mean, generally saying i should probably change my power supply, but it does have surge protection, so shouldn't take my components with it, and even if it does i can rma the expensive ones. but this thing is a tank, no matter what i throw at it, it just wont die! it beeps at me if im overloading a rail or the fan isnt working how it should, but the psu has grown on me, and my opinion of power supply ageing has changed compleltly, to be honest its running a power heavy system that's requires a 680watt psu, meaning it is still powering only 170watts les than its rated for, after 7 years of hardware changes, within itself that's an achievement for a psu, and ive been tempted to gtx 295 sli, but the psu calculator says id need an 1100watt psu, so i think it may be best not to. tis built by enermax though, and after toms review on the revo psu that was rated for 1350watts and was stable at 1700watts it makes me trust this psu more.

tell me if i should get another gtx 295 to see Werther this would run sli and ill consider it.

as for clean power this thing has small amounts of ripple but nothing to worry about

EDIT: just realised it beeps at me in furmark, this is due to running the 8pin pci-e witch is pulling about 200wats on the same 12v rail as the hard drives and optical drives and all my molex powerd fans, meaning at the moment i am asking 250+watts on a 204watt rail, and if i tape the beeper reset button down its stable!

Double EDIT: this is interesting the 850watt version says to have 5 12v rails at 17 amps each, exactly the same as the 1000watt version, and if you do the maths, that means they both should theoretically have 1020watts just on the 12v rails!?

So did enermax just change the model name and label it for only 850watts rather than 1000watts and sell it for less?

 

[S_I_N]

first off power surge protection is before the psu so if psu pops it will not protect your rig. Only thing that will protect your rig in the event of a POP as y'all are calling it is the build of the psu and the protections it has inside it to prevent the pop from going out into your rig. While 5yo psu may still run fine your asking because your uncertain yourself lol which means you suspect something already. So why take chances if you suspect it replace it, most current psus have features designed inside to prevent the pop for harming your rig.

 

[ZZAC]

first off power surge protection is before the psu so if psu pops it will not protect your rig. Only thing that will protect your rig in the event of a POP as y'all are calling it is the build of the psu and the protections it has inside it to prevent the pop from going out into your rig. While 5yo psu may still run fine your asking because your uncertain yourself lol which means you suspect something already. So why take chances if you suspect it replace it, most current psus have features designed inside to prevent the pop for harming your rig.

well if the psu pops it will protect my rig, Enermax has one of thee highest levels of protection, after doing research i have found that when overloading a rail it beeps twice, this indicates psu protection mode, so that if it does blow it will not take anything with it, so overall when the psu thinks there is something wrong it protects the psu and the rest of the system. it has lots of safety features, and lots off beeping if anything is to go wrong.

its not that im unsure, please reed my OP where i clearly state im running a 7 year old power supply i brought for £5 and was wondering what peoples opinions where on that....

 

[S_I_N]

I did read the OP lol but as weall know its sometime tuff to determine context. If its running fine then i would say bang on til it dies I myself would have that running a backup rig more than my main rig.

 

[SnW]

well if the psu pops it will protect my rig, Enermax has one of thee highest levels of protection, after doing research i have found that when overloading a rail it beeps twice, this indicates psu protection mode, so that if it does blow it will not take anything with it, so overall when the psu thinks there is something wrong it protects the psu and the rest of the system. it has lots of safety features, and lots off beeping if anything is to go wrong.

its not that im unsure, please reed my OP where i clearly state im running a 7 year old power supply i brought for £5 and was wondering what peoples opinions where on that....

A PSU that blows can take a whole rig with it,

not sure what you mean ?!

 

[S_I_N]

A PSU that blows can take a whole rig with it,

not sure what you mean ?!

agreed if the protects fail when it pops (or due to age

) it most deffo can take out the rig.

 

[ZZAC]

A PSU that blows can take a whole rig with it,

not sure what you mean ?!

i may have worded it badly, this psu has protection built in, if its being overloaded it will go into protect mode meaning that it wont take the system with it.

 

[ZZAC]

agreed if the protects fail when it pops (or due to age

) it most deffo can take out the rig.

but its unlikely ive had a £2 carbootsale psu pop on me, nothing to protect it, and it took out... nothing, like all of the other psu.

so in the unlikely event that the power supply pops, and protection is not functioning, then there is a small chance that i could take out components running on one of the rails, and considering there's different rails for most of the individual expensive things such as gpu's cpu's motherbaord, perphirals.ect then there is a very unlikely chance im going to take my whole rig with it

 

[ruthless_villain]

the second its out of warranty is the time to replace it for me.

 

[Firat]

the second its out of warranty is the time to replace it for me.

This.

 

[Jason-CL]

I would just say, better safe than sorry. Honestly, I don't know what your expendable income is, but mine isn't big at all. I'm a full-time student, work part time for NZXT. So when deciding on components for a build, I always look at the PSU first. This Corsair PSU has been with me through 4 different builds and I've fully sleeved it twice. Corsair, I should mention, is a rebrand of Seasonic, which both have had favorable reviews from guys who know way too much about Ripples and Rails and Clean Power.

That stuff is beyond me. However, I do trust certain reviewers and go with their recommendations to avoid any hazards or heartache in the future. The last thing I need is to spend another 2000+ dollars to replace everything in my rig.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Corsair IS NOT a rebrand. They are corsair specific designs. Seasonic just happen to be the company that manufacture the Corsair PSU's

 

[Rastalovich]

Inherently, anything electronic will have an in-built lifespan of approx. 5 years.

5 years is a massive generalization, but it's based on the components within the items having a lifespan of their own, divided into an 8 hour day (could be 10).

So you could say 5 years @ 8/10 hours a day.

 

[ZZAC]

Corsair IS NOT a rebrand. They are corsair specific designs. Seasonic just happen to be the company that manufacture the Corsair PSU's

this is a very good point of view, i am also a full time student, the difference is i dont work for nzxt, i dont work anywhere, so i try pulling as much money as i can self earnt, this can be up to £600 a month but more likely is under £100

so yeah my income can be good and bad. But i trust this psu, i understand peoples opinions, but if you look at the sticker and work out the actual wattage it should have pushed when new would be a peak of 1250watt, this may not be as efficiently as what its rated for though.

so im not replacing it, i was just wondering what sort of reaction id get if im seen using a 2005/2006 psu

so im already outside of that 5 years, or most likely am

 

[dukeReinhardt]

i had a dell ~300w PSU (max 350w) on nearly 24/7 for about 6 years with an overclocked 7900gs without any issues... until it popped

(this was before i knew anything at all about computers!). it didn't take out anything. but i think the general consensus is to play it safe and change psus every 5 years if branded.

 

[ZZAC]

Corsair IS NOT a rebrand. They are corsair specific designs. Seasonic just happen to be the company that manufacture the Corsair PSU's

Hey tom, if i do change my psu and offer this to you could you make a vid or a thread testing what this old lump does, I know you love enermax psu's