Did I damage anything by not giving the PC enough watts for 15 seconds?

[DarkAlpha_Sete]

So, long story short, I was a complete idiot and used an UPS without checking its power rating (it's 260W...). I then proceed to run run a game and there's a chance it didn't provide enough power for about 15 seconds (it warned, honestly could either not have provided it or did it while damaging itself). The PC boots up fine and seems to be working without a problem, but I'm scared I damaged my first build. I'm really worried.

 

If it matters, I'm using a Ryzen 5 3600 and a XFX RX 590 8GB (PCPartPicker estimates 374W). PSU is a Corsair TX650M.

[DarkAlpha_Sete]

2 minutes ago, Escanor said:

hardware will down clock if it does not have enough power, i would imagine pc draws power directly from power line that only matters when power go's out but can't confirm but that is how i imagine it would work, i would not worry however if ups is not rated good enough i would not use it for your system get a better one.

After this happened and I noticed its rating was too low I immediately shut the PC down and stopped using the UPS. But I am really worried because I'm a noob and have no idea if this could have caused any damage.

[mariushm]

1 minute ago, Escanor said:

hardware will down clock if it does not have enough power,

No, that's not how it goes.

 

The power supply takes the input AC voltage and produces output voltages the components need. It also monitors the quality of the input and output voltages. ... if they go outside some ranges the psu shuts down to protect the pc.

 

When the pc consumed so much power, the ups wasn't able to keep up, so the voltage it produced probably went down below the range where the psu can function, so the psu shut itself down.

 

No, nothing bad happened to your hardware, to your processor or video card or motherboard.  The worst that could happen is you losing some data due to sudden shut down

[SupaKomputa]

UPS only run if there's a outage, so you are running it through the wall if nothing happen.

 

[Boomwebsearch]

1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

UPS only run if there's a outage, so you are running it through the wall if nothing happen.

 

This is true for standby UPS units (some will put on backup when the voltage becomes too low/high), although line-interactive UPS units contain transformers to adjust the voltage if the wall power is below or above a certain threshold. Any decent power supply should shutdown if the voltage is too high/low to protect your components and if there is a short detected.

[DarkAlpha_Sete]

3 minutes ago, mariushm said:

No, that's not how it goes.

 

The power supply takes the input AC voltage and produces output voltages the components need. It also monitors the quality of the input and output voltages. ... if they go outside some ranges the psu shuts down to protect the pc.

 

When the pc consumed so much power, the ups wasn't able to keep up, so the voltage it produced probably went down below the range where the psu can function, so the psu shut itself down.

 

No, nothing bad happened to your hardware, to your processor or video card or motherboard.  The worst that could happen is you losing some data due to sudden shut down

The PC did not shut down by itself, it was me as I got scared... But thanks a lot for relieving me. I don't think I would be able to sleep if I damage by first rig less than a day after building it...

[DarkAlpha_Sete]

Just now, Boomwebsearch said:

 

This is true for standby UPS units (some will put on backup when the voltage becomes too low/high), although line-interactive UPS units contain transformers to adjust the voltage if the wall power is below or above a certain threshold. Any decent power supply should shutdown if the voltage is too high/low to protect your components and if there is a short detected.

Not the other guy but your explanation seems pretty good. But what does it mean if nothing shut down by itself? That seems pretty weird

[mariushm]

Just now, Escanor said:

 

Pretty sure if gpu gets not enough power it downclocks as well as other hardware asuming it would run ofcourse, i would imagine if psu drew more power then ups can handle it would instantly power off anyway due safety and protections.

No, the video card expects that power is available.

If the video card demands too much and the power supply can't provide that much (ex running a rx 580 card that consumes up to 225w on a 300w power supply, where the cpu and motherboard also consume power) then at some point the built in protections of the power supply will trigger and psu will shut down.

If you have a cheap psu with minimal protections, it may happen the psu lowers output voltage, for example you'd see it output 11.6v instead of 12v, in an attempt to keep up. At some point, the voltage will go too low and psu protection will shut down the power supply.

 

[mariushm]

Also most UPSes  don't power the computer directly unless there's some power event (AC voltage too low or too high, frequency fluctuations , ac voltage loss etc)

Normally, the UPS just monitors the line and the pc is connected directly to the mains.

IF there's some flaw, the UPS quickly disconnects the mains cables and puts itself in between and starts its own internal generator, converting 12v from the internal battery to 110v AC or 230v AC the power supply expects.

The whole process lasts usually less than 10ms ... and power supplies are supposed to function for at least 1 AC cycle (~16ms) at their maximum rated power without incoming energy, so things work out like that most of the time.

 

The expensive on-line UPSes are exception... these always power everything connected to their mains outlets from battery, all the time.

[Boomwebsearch]

1 minute ago, DarkAlpha_Sete said:

Not the other guy but your explanation seems pretty good. But what does it mean if nothing shut down by itself? That seems pretty weird

 

I picked up an old APC UPS from a thrift store that was advertised for a higher wattage than it could handle, the UPS shutdown and beeped loudly + continuously until I powered it off. Nothing was damaged, and I returned the unit, got a larger unit later on.

 

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

The expensive on-line UPSes are exception... these always power everything connected to their mains outlets from battery, all the time.

The line-interactive UPS units have transformers to lower/boost voltage and continuously monitor it to adjust it whenever needed, although if it falls way too low then it will start running off of battery, line-interactive UPS units have a shorter switching time than standby units (usually). 

[mariushm]

26 minutes ago, Escanor said:

 

Vaguely remembers faulty power supplies not delivering enough power causing gpu to just not clock full speed guess either things changed or i miss understand how it works.

It's more or less a side effect.

Trying to keep it as simple as possible.

You have a VRM , a dc-dc converter circuit which converts 12v into the lower voltage the cpu needs, which can vary between let's say 0.5v and 1.4v, depending on the frequency of the cores (to save power, when the cpu can lower all the cores' frequency, it ca also lower the voltage required to operate, because there's no need to keep the voltage up)

So the circuit plays with two parameters : voltage and current ... voltage x current is power, how much the processor consumes.

 

This converter circuit works by turning on and off those phases thousands of times a second, varying the amount of time each phase stays on and off, to get the exact voltage the cpu wants and supply the total power... think of it like each phase squirting a bit of water into a bucket trying to keep the maximum level fixed while someone either sucks a bit of water through a straw, or suddenly taking a big gulp of water.... the vrm controller reacts quickly as the water level changes in a bucket and either squirts or dumps a bit of water to keep everything at constant level.

 

So let's have an example:  let's say the processor wants 1.1 volts and 50 watts.

The controller chip sees 12.05v at the input and sees that the processor wants 1.1 volts and it quickly does the math and knows it has to turn on and off each phase 35400 times a second to sustain that 1.1 volts at 50 watts of power consumption.

If the processor consumes a bit than 50 watts, let's say 60w, the controller chip will detect that the output voltage went below 1.1 volts (the water level has fallen because someone sucked too much water from bucket) and does the math again : it reads the input voltage again and now maybe it's 11.98v instead of 12.05v (if power supply sucks and has high voltage ripple) and the math says it has to increase the number of pulses from 35400 times a second to 38000 times a second to keep the voltage at 1.1v

These recalculations happen tens to hundreds of times a second.

 

From time to time, especially when overclocking, you can have situations where the processor had all cores at 3.0 Ghz and needed only 1.1v to function and cpu consumes 30w, and after a few  ms the cores are at 4 ghz and now the voltage is 1.4v and cpu has an instant power consumption of 100w

The controller chip does the math and reacts quickly and changes the number of pulses to quickly satisfy the cpus demands and does so super fast, but if the power supply is of lousy quality and the output voltage fluctuates a lot (voltage ripple), the controller chip has to constantly recalculate and adjust itself to work with the crappy input power, so it takes a bit longer for the output voltage to the cpu to stabilize to the desired parameters.

So if the cpu needs 1.4v to reach 4 ghz , the vrm may only be able to get 1.39v because the input voltage fluctuates too much, or it may take 10ms instead of 2ms to stabilize to 4 ghz, at which point the cpu maybe says "oh shit, the power quality is too poor to try for 4 ghz"  ... because there's not enough input voltage on the cpu, the cpu can't reach that 4 ghz and will have to settle for let's say 3.8 ghz

 

So a cleaner voltage means just the potential for higher overclocking, and for smoother voltages all around, which could mean a sustained overclock, or getting higher turbo/boost frequencies.

 

argh not sure if I've explained it well, but it's 1:30 am here and i have to get up at 6:30 to go to work, so I have to stop here for today.

[Curious Pineapple]

@mariushmis mostly correct about VRM's. What the VRM's do is run at a fixed frequency (say 100kHz), I'll use 4 phases as a nice simple example and 10 kHz as it's late and the numbers get small, but you can divide by 10 to get more accurate numbers.

 

The regulators use PWM to control the voltage, that is varying the amount of time they are on/off using a square wave. What happens is the timers that control the on/off periods are staggered so that, there is always at least one regulator providing current. In this example it takes 100 microseconds for a single on/off cycle. With 4 phases one regulator turns on, then 25 microseconds later another, then another, and again another at 25 microsecond intervals. Each regulator keeps it's output on for however long is calculated then turns off. In this case anything under 25% means the CPU/GPU is running purely on what is stored in capacitors for short periods (which is why there is so many of them around big processors). More phases means more outputs providing power over the smaller intervals, and also more capacity to dump hundreds of amp's when required.

 

On the topic of under-rated UPS, well you're fine. The UPS may as well just be an extension lead until the power fails. As for having a PSU that's not rated for the job, if you have a decent one then it will just shut off. If it's a piece of shit like my old one, it will explode throwing soot out the back when your graphics card decides to go all kamikaze. Nothing in the system will detect an under-rated PSU as such, what will happen is if the PSU output voltage starts to sag, the regulators will start drawing more current to make up for the drop in voltage. Avalanch happens where more current drops voltage, meaning more current, and less voltage, and eventually something either shuts off, or shits up.

 

My PSU will start a small car

[DarkAlpha_Sete]

 

I checked and I think it seems to be an "inline interactive" UPS, so to my understanding of everyone's useful insight, I should be perfectly fine. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Thanks everyone for the useful information.