Group regulated psu -how much it shortens the lifespan of other pc components?

[RainingTacco]

Say that you have group regulated psu instead of dc-dc or voltages that are out of ATX spec. How much it decrease lifespan of other components? Is it a function. a line, a graph? Like 11.4V decrease lifespan by 5 years, and 11.6 by 3 years and 11.8 by 1 year and so on? 

Basically im wondering how much shorten a lifespan of ryzen 2600 + rx580 pc will be with group regulated 550W psu[that have really decent specs, but otherwise its group regulated]? If its really so bad, i will pay that additional 15 usd for DC-DC, but the person i build a pc for is tight on budget. 

[Fasauceome]

It's not a set time, since it's out of spec it can behave in unknown ways. Though the damage is very slow and long-term.

 

for a ryzen 5 and RX 580, I wouldn't think a DC-DC is an absolute must, they're not terribly demanding components. However I always recommend a better PSU for a system like that since upgrading is usually a primary goal. If you think you'll stick with that 580 and 2600 to the end of time, don't sweat it.

 

[RainingTacco]

3 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

It's not a set time, since it's out of spec it can behave in unknown ways. Though the damage is very slow and long-term.

 

for a ryzen 5 and RX 580, I wouldn't think a DC-DC is an absolute must, they're not terribly demanding components. However I always recommend a better PSU for a system like that since upgrading is usually a primary goal. If you think you'll stick with that 580 and 2600 to the end of time, don't sweat it.

 

Im just building PC for a young nephew and he wants it cheap. He won't upgrade it, won't put it into rendering/furmark for 24h/7 days. He will most likely play whatever esport game that are popular right now. 

The PSU is this

https://www.silentiumpc.com/en/product/elementum-e2-550w-80plus-eu/

It's supposedly a CWT platform so should be decent, and not like these complete no-name chinese brands. 

 

I will check voltages with HWINFO64[yeah i know not reliable] today after playing some games on that PC, but im going to sleep now.

[mariushm]

It doesn't shorten the life of components in any significant way. 

Pretty much only fans and mechanical drive motors use 12v - everything else uses a dc-dc converter to convert 12v to whatever lower voltage is desired.

The dc-dc converters are designed on purpose to accept a reasonably wide input voltage, let's say 10v .. 14v and convert it down to the voltage the device needs.  Some minute variation in the input voltage will only change the switching frequency, and this is the annoyance factor.. depending on input voltage and amount of power the device wants, the psu's frequency may switch to a less common switching frequency and therefore the inductors in the dc-dc regulator circuit may start to make that noise called "coil whine"

[Ankerson]

11 hours ago, RainingTacco said:

Im just building PC for a young nephew and he wants it cheap. He won't upgrade it, won't put it into rendering/furmark for 24h/7 days. He will most likely play whatever esport game that are popular right now. 

The PSU is this

https://www.silentiumpc.com/en/product/elementum-e2-550w-80plus-eu/

It's supposedly a CWT platform so should be decent, and not like these complete no-name chinese brands. 

 

I will check voltages with HWINFO64[yeah i know not reliable] today after playing some games on that PC, but im going to sleep now.

 

I would still get something better than that.

 

 

[Guest]

12 hours ago, RainingTacco said:

 

The PSU is this

https://www.silentiumpc.com/en/product/elementum-e2-550w-80plus-eu/

 

That's a pretty terrible PSU, but not something that's going to destroy your hardware.  You might experience random shutdowns and reboots, etc.  But I wouldn't expect it to kill your hardware over a five year period.

 

[RainingTacco]

So far occt power test with avx instructions yielded voltages that are within atx spec, but it was close on 12v rail. Goes and wake up from sleep too without problems. During heavy gaming 12v doesnt drop below 11.6, 3.3v is kinda high though. Will see how it fares, if it make any problem i will get him silentiumpc vero L3 which is decent psu. 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, RainingTacco said:

So far occt power test with avx instructions yielded voltages that are within atx spec, but it was close on 12v rail. Goes and wake up from sleep too without problems. During heavy gaming 12v doesnt drop below 11.6, 3.3v is kinda high though. Will see how it fares, if it make any problem i will get him silentiumpc vero L3 which is decent psu. 

OCCT is a joke.  Run Prime95 and Furmark at the same time.  Occasionally press the space bar while Furmark is in the foreground.

[RainingTacco]

Im kinda scared to push into "limit" with furmark/prime95 but truth be told it only takes 355w of power during occt, and it already have some trouble regulating. Would never run it to a literal max of 550w or even 500w. Its a cheap psu after all  Nephew wont do any of that, if it goes in smoke i just hope it wont kill his stuff.

[akio123008]

Just now, RainingTacco said:

Would never run it to a literal max of 550w or even 500w. 

I doubt you'd be able to on the hardware involved.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, RainingTacco said:

Im kinda scared to push into "limit" with furmark/prime95 

A good PSU should handle it.

 

If you're worried it can't handle it, then that's reason enough to replace it.

 

 

[Ankerson]

37 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

A good PSU should handle it.

 

If you're worried it can't handle it, then that's reason enough to replace it.

 

 

 

Yeah, things change really quick one you tell them to do that, the excuses start coming out left and right.....

 

I tell people to do the same thing, if you think it's good then load that puppy up and lets see. 

 

Haven't had any takers yet if that tells you anything. 

[RainingTacco]

3 hours ago, Ankerson said:

 

Yeah, things change really quick one you tell them to do that, the excuses start coming out left and right.....

 

I tell people to do the same thing, if you think it's good then load that puppy up and lets see. 

 

Haven't had any takers yet if that tells you anything. 

PSU gurus are like any other specialist in their fields -they take edge cases and blow it out of proportions. Like if you asked a virologist what he recommends right now, he/she would say that for best safety you should go with full hazmat all the time, but the truth is -life is taking risks and assessing those risks and cases where they can appear. No one in right mind would wear full hazmat everyday 24h, just like i won't put this crappy PSU under a artificially manufactured case scenario with extreme transient load, switching every few seconds for hours. I know scientists and engineers love to put things to test and see how well they've made their titantium full proof psu with capacitors on every damn cable[fuck inline caps] but hey, it will only make a nice flat graph to feel you better

 

Sorry for the semi rant, but sometimes people just take things too seriously, like an average user was buying a PSU to run a bank vault security system or his livelihood depends on the psu becasue he make a render that will render for two weeks straight and needs that AXi 1600W PSU[who the hell needs a 1600W PSU, even SLI RTX 3090 and threadripper won't take 1KW  ]

 

I've just asked a simple question whether poor voltage regulation will affect component lifespan, sadly didn't get sufficent answer. I hoped that someone made a an actual empirical study on that, or at least tests running PSUs for months and checking the degradation of components under microscope and with measurement equipment[mutlimeter checking for capacitance etc]. I would also like to see  same study for PSU ripple regulation if possible. Truth be told, the biggest offenders are capacitors and then varistors, they take the blunt of all this problems, in theory replacing caps and varistors on an old psu should prolong its lifetime drastically. 

[Ankerson]

19 minutes ago, RainingTacco said:

even SLI RTX 3090 and threadripper won't take 1KW  ]

 

 

It would take a lot more than 1000W, one hell of a lot more, just the 2 cards alone would pull more than that.....

 

I have seen mine pull well over 700W almost 800W before as an example.

 

People have no idea what these machines can really pull power wise when really pushed, unless they actually have one and the means to measure the power draw.

 

And I am not talking about some $20 kill watt either.

[RainingTacco]

A highly OCed 3090 sli will pull 1KW with worst case scenario like furmark. Still your PSU is such an overkill for that system[kinda stupid question when myself i paired ryzen 3600 with 5700xt but reading the horror storied about AMD gpus peaking at 2 times their wattage, i wanted an overkill and i plan to use this PSU for two builds, so its best if it runs at below its 50% capacity]  Why? 

[Ankerson]

41 minutes ago, RainingTacco said:

A highly OCed 3090 sli will pull 1KW with worst case scenario like furmark. Still your PSU is such an overkill for that system[kinda stupid question when myself i paired ryzen 3600 with 5700xt but reading the horror storied about AMD gpus peaking at 2 times their wattage, i wanted an overkill and i plan to use this PSU for two builds, so its best if it runs at below its 50% capacity]  Why? 

No they will pull that without running furmark...

 

I didn't buy it for the wattage, I bought it because of what it is, the wattage is irrelevant. 

 

If they made a 1200W vers of THIS exact PSU I would have bought that. (They don't.)

 

And no it's not overkill, I am sitting at over 90% efficiency at idle and more than 95% at load. 

 

40% to 45% load maxed out isn't really that bad actually.... But yeah I would have gotten a 1200W if they had an updated vers of the AXI.. That can match this one....

 

@jonnyGURU

[RainingTacco]

1 hour ago, Ankerson said:

 

I didn't buy it for the wattage, I bought it because of what it is, the wattage is irrelevant. 

 

Am i wrong assuming that this is your work PC? Because otherwise, why put so much money in an absolutely stellar reliability under any circumstances? Unless you really love PSUs or money isnt an issue at all

[Ankerson]

7 minutes ago, RainingTacco said:

Am i wrong assuming that this is your work PC? Because otherwise, why put so much money in an absolutely stellar reliability under any circumstances? Unless you really love PSUs or money isnt an issue at all

 

I overclock quite a bit (GPUS), really push the GPUs a lot so I wanted the cleanest power that I could get.

[RainingTacco]

Ok fair point. @jonnyguru are there PSUs that use fuses and current shunts in case something goes awry? 

[Ankerson]

1 hour ago, RainingTacco said:

Ok fair point. @jonnyguru are there PSUs that use fuses and current shunts in case something goes awry? 

 

 

I have my 3rd 3080 FTW3 Ultra coming soon.

 

1st one went bad, RMA. Was a good OCer, but the core didn't hold clocks very well, memory was unbelievably good though. The card had issues from the beginning though.

 

2nd one was supposed to be new, but wasn't so RMA.... Well the memory didn't OC worth a damn anyway... Pretty useless if the memory doesn't OC...

 

3rd one on the way, will be a new card this time like it's was supposed to be, fingers crossed on this one that it will OC well so it might be worth putting it under water.

 

 

[Guest]

15 hours ago, RainingTacco said:

Ok fair point. @jonnyguru are there PSUs that use fuses and current shunts in case something goes awry? 

That's why I responded with "a good PSU should handle it".  I'm not talking about your system pulling anywhere near 550W, because it won't.  And that's not my point.

 

You can have an 850W "run" a 3090, but when those transient spikes get too high, the PSU shuts off and everything is protected.

 

See, unfortunately with high end equipment, people with cheap wall meters or DMMs or software or whatever they're using to "measure" power consumption, isn't capturing true power usage.  They're getting RMS at best.  So you run Prime95 and Furmark.  You hit the space bar a bunch of times in Furmark.  If you're anywhere near a transient spike that the PSU can't handle, the PSU shuts down.  Of course, if the PSU is complete garbage (a Silentium typically is not), it'll just go "pop" and maybe kill your motherboard and/or graphics card.

 

[Ankerson]

18 hours ago, RainingTacco said:

I've just asked a simple question whether poor voltage regulation will affect component lifespan, sadly didn't get sufficent answer. I hoped that someone made a an actual empirical study on that, or at least tests running PSUs for months and checking the degradation of components under microscope and with measurement equipment[mutlimeter checking for capacitance etc]. I would also like to see  same study for PSU ripple regulation if possible. Truth be told, the biggest offenders are capacitors and then varistors, they take the blunt of all this problems, in theory replacing caps and varistors on an old psu should prolong its lifetime drastically. 

 

Yes they have.... But with a lot more advanced equipment than a multimeter. 

 

Multimeters, kill watts, and all of those assorted things you see on YT don't mean anything really. It takes a lot more advanced equipment to actually measure power output etc on a PSU than that crap. When I see some video from someone who is supposed to know something go near a PSU with a multimeter I just shut off the video.....

 

@jonnyGURU

 

 

[Ankerson]

35 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

That's why I responded with "a good PSU should handle it".  I'm not talking about your system pulling anywhere near 550W, because it won't.  And that's not my point.

 

You can have an 850W "run" a 3090, but when those transient spikes get too high, the PSU shuts off and everything is protected.

 

See, unfortunately with high end equipment, people with cheap wall meters or DMMs or software or whatever they're using to "measure" power consumption, isn't capturing true power usage.  They're getting RMS at best.  So you run Prime95 and Furmark.  You hit the space bar a bunch of times in Furmark.  If you're anywhere near a transient spike that the PSU can't handle, the PSU shuts down.  Of course, if the PSU is complete garbage (a Silentium typically is not), it'll just go "pop" and maybe kill your motherboard and/or graphics card.

 

 

 

I have been trying to tell people that, but they saw some YT video by some self proclaimed expert, you know how that is...

 

You know YT is gospel right? 

 

Seen a lot of questionable at best to dangerous things people with YT channels push....

 

Then that stuff ends up being posted on the forums.... 

 

 

[Guest]

The only videos that properly test PSU's are Hardware Busters... and there are some doozies!

 

 

 

 

[Ankerson]

1 hour ago, jonnyGURU said:

The only videos that properly test PSU's are Hardware Busters... and there are some doozies!

 

 

Yeah, Aris...