10 years old PSU - Enermax MODU 87+ - 500w 80+ gold

[Kokomo733]

Hi everyone!

 

A friend gave me his old pc, which served as an office pc with and old Intel due processor, used literally only for microsoft office and emails.

Now, all the components are essentially garbage, except for the PSU: a semi-modular 500w 80+ gold Enermax "MODU 87+".

It has been used from 2011 to 2016, and then the pc was changed for a new one and this PSU just stayed inside the old pc on a shelf.

As you can see from the photos, the PSU seems to be almost new, no dust and it works perfectly.

 

The question I have is the following: Even if it is a 10 years old PSU, is it safe to still use it in a modern gaming pc?

 

Thanks!

[Juular]

1 hour ago, Kokomo733 said:

The question I have is the following: Even if it is a 10 years old PSU, is it safe to still use it in a modern gaming pc?

No, because it's a 10 yo PSU.

[Kokomo733]

Wow ok. Some explanations? What are the risks?

Becuase if it works until it doesn't, it is not a problem. Unless there's a consistent and real risk that it might do damage to other components.

[Ankerson]

1 hour ago, Kokomo733 said:

Wow ok. Some explanations? What are the risks?

Becuase if it works until it doesn't, it is not a problem. Unless there's a consistent and real risk that it might do damage to other components.

 

The risk is real.

 

Throw that PSU in the trash and forget you ever saw it.

 

@jonnyGURU

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Kokomo733 said:

Becuase if it works until it doesn't, it is not a problem. 

It works?  What's the voltage drop from no to full load?  How much ripple are you measuring with your oscilliscope?  When you hit it with a 500W load for 10ms, do the voltages stay up or do they drop out or does the PSU shut down?  What does your power good signal measure?  If you short +5VSB to any of the other rails, does SCP make the PSU shut down completely or do the voltage just bounce around everywhere?

 

 

[Ankerson]

10 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

It works?  What's the voltage drop from no to full load?  How much ripple are you measuring with your oscilliscope?  When you hit it with a 500W load for 10ms, do the voltages stay up or do they drop out or does the PSU shut down?  What does your power good signal measure?  If you short +5VSB to any of the other rails, does SCP make the PSU shut down completely or do the voltage just bounce around everywhere?

 

 

 

Remember Jonny it's an appliance so if it turns on it's fine, you know like a toaster.   

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Ankerson said:

 

Remember Jonny it's an appliance so if it turns on it's fine, you know like a toaster.   

Well, if he's lucky the inrush from plugging it in after being out of service for five years will blow something on the primary side and prevent any damage to any of his hardware.

 

[Ankerson]

4 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

Well, if he's lucky the inrush from plugging it in after being out of service for five years will blow something on the primary side and prevent any damage to any of his hardware.

 

 

That's if he is lucky and if the stars all lined up right and he has a box of rabbits feet in his pocket. 

[akio123008]

1 hour ago, Ankerson said:

Throw that PSU in the trash and forget you ever saw it.

Well you could still keep it. If at any point you're just trying to get some low priority computer/tinkering project up and running, and you're in need of "just some power supply that'll probably do the job for now" you'll have one in stock. Perhaps you could even convert it into a bench power supply for hobby electronics purposes. 

[RainingTacco]

I wouldnt put it over the rating, but if you will ran it to a max of 400w it should be fine. Some gpu like to trip protections with sudden power spike. Make sure you use ups to filter voltage spikes, the caps are old in this.

[Ankerson]

4 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

Well you could still keep it. If at any point you're just trying to get some low priority computer/tinkering project up and running, and you're in need of "just some power supply that'll probably do the job for now" you'll have one in stock. Perhaps you could even convert it into a bench power supply for hobby electronics purposes. 

 

Take PSU and throw it in the garbage.... There really is no other smart choice.

[akio123008]

2 minutes ago, Ankerson said:

There really is no other smart choice.

why though?

[Ankerson]

Just now, akio123008 said:

why though?

 

10 YO crap PSU, yeah it wasn't good when it was NEW....

 

The dump is the place it needs to go.

[akio123008]

2 minutes ago, Ankerson said:

10 YO crap PSU, yeah it wasn't good when it was NEW....

Wouldn't put it in a new build, but as a bench power supply it can be very useful. No need for perfect reliability there.

[Ankerson]

Just now, akio123008 said:

Wouldn't put it in a new build, but as a bench power supply it can be very useful. No need for perfect reliability there.

 

Yeah so it can fry the parts you would be testing?

 

AHHHHHH .... NO.....

[akio123008]

12 minutes ago, Ankerson said:

Yeah so it can fry the parts you would be testing?

 

AHHHHHH .... NO.....

When I say bench supply I'm not talking PC testbench, I'm talking hobby electronics power supply just to clarify.

https://www.instructables.com/Laboratory-Power-Supply-From-Old-ATX/ (something like that)

 

The equipment I (and many others) usually connect to a lab supply isn't nearly as sensitive as PC hardware so bad ripple/noise etc. isn't an issue. As long as what comes out of it is roughly 12V it's good.

 

The only way it could possibly fry anything is by means of overvoltage, which is rather unlikely, but even if it did happen, the fact that what's connected to it rarely costs more than 20 dollars that's not a big deal to me.

 

It's really just a fun DIY project so if you like tinkering I'd prefer this over the garbage bin. The latter is of course still a valid option.

[Ankerson]

1 minute ago, akio123008 said:

When I say bench supply I'm not talking PC testbench, I'm talking hobby electronics power supply just to clarify.

https://www.instructables.com/Laboratory-Power-Supply-From-Old-ATX/ (something like that)

 

The equipment I (and many others) usually connect to a lab supply isn't nearly as sensitive as PC hardware so bad ripple/noise etc. isn't an issue. As long as what comes out of it is roughly 12V it's good.

 

The only way it could possibly fry anything is by means of overvoltage, which is rather unlikely, but even if it did happen, the fact that what's connected to it rarely costs more than 20 dollars that's not a big deal to me.

 

That's assuming it would even power up in the 1st place and take any sort of load without popping.

[akio123008]

6 minutes ago, Ankerson said:

That's assuming it would even power up in the 1st place and take any sort of load without popping.

Well yeah I guess so. You can give it a shot though. (with a power resistor of course, not inside a computer). I mean sure it's old, it'd be a bit risky to use in a computer but technically there's a good chance it works well enough.

[Kokomo733]

Well thanks for the reply! At least for those who tried explaining instead of just say "JuSt ThrOW iT iN tHe GArBagE"

As I said in the original post, the PSU turn on, I have not tried it under any load or inside a pc.

 

I'm a simple civillian with no testing equipment nor any advanced knowledge, but I can at least try to learn.

If I want to test it and see how it behave under some workload, how would you suggest to do it?

[akio123008]

55 minutes ago, Kokomo733 said:

how would you suggest to do it?

Sort of tricky with little tools, but there are some methods you could use.

 

The easiest thing would be to find a pc that you don't really care about run that under full load on it, and see what happens.

 

If you don't have such a pc, you'd need to find some other load to attach. The way to go about that is by using power resistors.

 

You can calculate the power consumed using the forumla P = U^2/R (with P the power consumed, R the resistance of the resistor used and U the voltage) For instance, you connect a 6 ohm power resistor to the supply at 12V, so the power would be P = 12^2/6 = 144/6 = 24W. You can also reverse the maths (R = U^2/P) to figure out what resistance you need to get a certain power output.

 

You'd have no information on the ripple voltage though, which is an important factor for long term use in a computer. There's a way to estimate the ripple without a scope, but it's not entirely accurate and I'm not going to go into that in this post because it''d be getting a bit too long.

 

Nonetheless I wouldn't recommend you use the thing in a new rig. Even if you test it properly and everything works, stuff in it could break down in just a few years which isn't what you want. In some random old PC? Sure. As a hobby/bench power supply? Absolutely. But rather not in a shiny new rig.

[Kokomo733]

Thanks, this is already very helpful.Yes I would not use it in a new PC of any kind, my idea was to mount it in my older gaming pc to play with a friend of mine, and lure it into the pc gaming world 

 

Anyway, I have a very old pc, which is the one that came with this PSU. But I haven't any power hungry components, only an 2.4 GHz Intel duo, which I think can draw no more than what, 30-50 w? Or is there a way to still test the PSU with load using such a PC?

Otherwise, I will buy some restistors and a multimeter.

Thanks again!

[akio123008]

1 hour ago, Kokomo733 said:

Anyway, I have a very old pc, which is the one that came with this PSU. But I haven't any power hungry components, only an 2.4 GHz Intel duo

You'll have a hard time producing a greater load than that computer with power resistors. 100+W resistors (or multiple smaller ones) could end up costing quite a bit. Testing it in that old rig at the very least reveals if the thing can handle a moderate load, in other words if it's not complete junk, and it's free. At the end of the day what it comes down to is, so long as you're just screwing around with cheap and low priority stuff there's really not much to worry about.