psu PSU might me damaged after many power outages?

[FrozenHydrangea]

i've built my first PC in 2020 with a 650W EVGA GQ, and it got through many power outtages up to this day. i eventually bought a power strip (one that is intended to protect electronics plugged into it) after some time. my PC still works fine, except for an SSD which eventually gave up (PC does not recognize it even if plugged externally with a USB to Sata cable). 

 

Should i worry about my current PSU killing itself and taking the other components with it? should i buy a new one? im buying an UPS either way (wish i did it sooner)

[Somerandomtechyboi]

17 minutes ago, FrozenHydrangea said:

Should i worry about my current PSU killing itself and taking the other components with it?

nope

even if it did kill itself it is very unlikely to take other components out with it

 

and ill clarify that psu death =/= explosion since thats a catastrophic failiure and is basically exclusive to china unbranded black psus youd find off a site like aliexpress, even then still unlikely to take any other components out with it. if your psu dies then its probably just gonna outright stop working and all you gotta do is replace it

[manikyath]

9 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

basically exclusive to china unbranded black psus youd find off a site like aliexpress

ohlord, it's not at all, not by a long shot.

 

but... in case of failure, the less the manufacturer skimped on protections, the less likely it is for things to go *very* bad.. in this case, EVGA GQ is reliable enough to assume that it's fine on that part.

 

having that said - your power supply doesnt care about power outages, surges maybe but they have built in surge protectors for that.

[jaslion]

34 minutes ago, manikyath said:

ohlord, it's not at all, not by a long shot.

Extremely this. Evga literally has em too. The w1 series can literally go inferno :p.

 

35 minutes ago, manikyath said:

having that said - your power supply doesnt care about power outages, surges maybe but they have built in surge protectors for that.

Surges and brown power will eventually wear that protection down but on a decent unit that just means it seizes to function gracefully and just kills itself before harm is done. The gq op has is a decent one that has working protections against all of this and will firstly kill itself before doing harm.

 

You can extend the life by using a ups but that is basically just giving the beating to the ups if you have brownouts however pure power outages is what these are built for and can be nice. Not neccessary tho in this case.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

ohlord, it's not at all, not by a long shot.

 

but... in case of failure, the less the manufacturer skimped on protections, the less likely it is for things to go *very* bad.. in this case, EVGA GQ is reliable enough to assume that it's fine on that part.

 

having that said - your power supply doesnt care about power outages, surges maybe but they have built in surge protectors for that.

Havent had any of my oem gray box units blow up or atleast fail on me when i hooked em up to my p5q even though 12v was reading 14.2v 5v was reading 6v and 3.3v was reading 2.7v, only unit that has failed on me was a china unbranded 650w i wasted 30$ on and it literally exploded on me though rest of the build was untouched so looks to be pretty unlikely no matter what psu and that gets less likely the better the unit

 

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Extremely this. Evga literally has em too. The w1 series can literally go inferno :p.

Have there been any reports of these literally blowing up or do they just outright stop working as id expect any unit to once theyve died of natural causes or a lemon that decides to die earlier than expected

 

Figured out after awhile that those oem gray box units are just too shitty to run my p5q so checked the wattage table and saw really weak 12v rails, then proceded to buy my 450w dazumba after another attempt at cheaping out on the psu with another oem gray box but 12v = 22a for a 500w unit instead of only 10a or dual rail 12a units that i had

 

dazumba still working to this day even though ive definitely overloaded it multiple times trying to overclock x58 and run an rx 580 on it, then bought 2 more used psus still under 20$ (dsa ii 550w, tundra 85+ 700w) with the only criteria being 12v =/= >100w under psu advertised rating, both also still working to this day and the tundra is my current main psu

 

Spoiler

this is still well within that 100w rule (eff 480w) and that tundra 700w is a 648w which means that it should be worse than the w1 yet ive had 0 issues with it

[Caroline]

Ok so the problem with "noname black/gray chinese units" is that most people use them incorrectly, you can't power a high end computer with one of those, yet users try and try and always end up with a dead PSU or other components failing/gone.

 

That's on users not knowing or being ignorant of what's inside them, you can only blame them to a degree, then -this is far worse imo- you have shady shops or technicians trying to pass "Gamemax" kind of crap as actual decent products and basically scamming unaware people into buying one, this is far too common in noname third world banana republics like mine, you have ANCIENT power supplies being sold as brand new high end units for gaming PCs or workstations and priced as high as $130 for a Thermaltake Berlin from 2005, then of course brands like Gamemax and some crappy local brands trying to pass those as good just because they come with a LED fan or braided cables, and newbs usually fall for the trap basically because actual good units are unobtanium unless you have friends/family abroad that can purchase them for you and then somehow smuggle them in (what I did, in a nutshell), if you don't have anyone outside you're basically stuck with shitty components for life. And no, there's no Amazon, Aliexpress, etc. because you need a special permit to import goods and only government officials/their friends & fam have them, no way for us lowlife mortals to obtain one.

I work with noname PSUs and tbh none of them have died on me, because I put them in simple PCs with no graphics cards, single HDD, etc. You can't pull more than 250 watts out of them, I've tried, both inductive and resistive loads, most peak at 250-275W and either try to keep working until something pops or (rarely) shut off, that with all rails equally loaded, if only the 12V is working it'll only give you about 150 watts, which is plenty btw.

What might cause to fail early are brownouts, which are also too common where I am, since those PSUs still feature the beloved by some hated by others voltage selection slider you can't go below ~180V input if it's set to 230.

 

Now as for YOUR power supply in question, it shouldn't be damaged by outages, unless you switch it off a hundred times a day while it's at 100% load, lab scenario basically.

Also want to clarify surges and brownouts aren't the same thing. There's a thing inside the power supply called a varistor, usually round and blue with two thin 'legs', which is the same thing that's inside surge protectors, it protects against line spikes but wears out if constantly hit by surges. Brownouts do not affect this component unless it's a quick voltage sag that causes it to drop and go up again in a few ms (the kind that makes lights blink instead of dimming them), that *might* count as a surge. It won't cause the PSU to stop working if it wears out, and unless it's blown there's no way to tell if it still works without measuring it outside the circuit, something users can't and shouldn't do.

 

Yes you can have the UPS take all the beatings but make sure you go for something good, there's also noname UPS out there. But if outages are rare you won't need one, say if you have one outage a year that lasts for 5 minutes what are the odds you're doing something super-duper important on the computer that you really need to save by using battery power? yes it's 1 in 365 but it was a rhetorical question.

The UPS won't offer more protection than a standard surge protector *against surges*. There's also the inbetween device that I rarely see mentioned here, probably because electrical grids in developed countries aren't in such a terrible condition as in mine, but it's the AVR, you get surge protection and also brownout protection, it will boost a low input voltage up to a degree, or drop a high voltage in the exceptionally rare case your line is higher than usual, it's the same as the UPS only without a battery.