PSU's are Overrated

Rouxenator

Rouxenator

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Often when a PC reboots at random or acts strangely people will first suspect the power supply. While this is valid in some cases I do not believe that it is true in most of them.

I base this on the fact that I have been using the same 250watt power supply since 2000 when I got my first ATX PC, a Pentium2 333Mhz with a Voodoo2 3000 AGP card. I replaced the fan of the power supply in 2007 because it got noisy.

The picture below was taken in 2007. My trusty PSU is inside a Asus mATX case powering an AMD X2 3800 (S939) with a GeForce 7600GS, 4x 1GB DDR400s, two DVD writers and two 320GB Seagate SATA2 drive. Just to stress test it I play NFS Carbon while formatting DVD-RWs in both drives and defragging both hard drives at the same time using OODefrag. The power supply has never missed a beat ;)
250watt.jpg

Since last year August I have upgraded to an AMD X2 6000 (AM2) that has dual 3ghz cores. I chucked out the 7600GS and I am now using the onboard Radeon X1250. My power supply is still going stong :D

Anyone else feel that PSU's are also getting too much attention ?
 
And nowadays with people likening PC's to their rides which they can pimp, I really don't pay attention to much.

Generally, not had many problems with PSU's except the really cheap ones they sell at fleamarkets and the like...
 
I must admit I have been running the PSU on a UPS since it was about 3 months old. I think with the bad quality of power we have in SA a quality UPS can add years to your PSU life.
 
Yeah, it could also be something as simple as a lot of dust that has accumulated in the CPU heatsink's grooves causing the fan to be ineffective, which will make the PC restart, power off.
 
In many cases, the PSU heatsink does not accumulate that much dust. More often than not the FAN is the part that takes the punch. The fans almost always seize and then there's no cooling and you're in trouble.

These power supplies are designed such as if there is a thermal fault, they will shut down. This will lead to a general powered-down state of your PC, likely not a restart. Restarts are caused by other things more often than not.
 
Hey I have that exact psu that came with my pentium 2 350mhz and it is still going strong.

It was much better than my 350w generic and a 400w generic which all gave up on me.

I think the older hardware had a better quality control during manufacturing?
 
In 20 years I have never bought a name brand psu and have had only one fail on me (which was most likely lightning). Even for my new Desktop which is a Q6600 with a 8800GT, I have bought a no-name 500W supply. I was toying with the idea of buying one, but could not justify the money in the end.
 
I have some pics of the inside of the 250watt PSU - very small components I must admit. I'll upload them when I get home...
 
All my PC power supplies have only ever needed fan replacement. However, Matrix Warehouse did sell me a PSU once, it was not a brand name or any well-known make I knew before. It was a piece of trash. I went to Rectron and got a decent PSU and never looked back
 
Have se same old PSU that came out of a P2 as well. Opened it once, fan b0rked, and replaced the fan. Superglued an AMD cpu fan to the air intake slots to help push air through so it would run a wee bit colder. Just incase... :D (OK, I was bored out of my skull when I did it, but it seems to work)
 
Roux i have exactly the same psu as you, i don't know how old it is cause i got it from a friend at one time, but its also running strong as ever, the only time i lost a PSU was when our electricity spiked to 400v(that was not a nice feeling)

Edit: Oh and Am i the only one that notices that sometimes the safeguards of the pc overheating a switched off? In the Bios? Cause i've come across a number of pc's doing that
 
Are Antec PSU's any good?

There is a Antec Trupower Trio 550W on special at digital planet that I might consider.
 
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I've got it a 500W Antec NeoPower and it's great. Silent and modular, which I'm sure the Trio will also be.

That is one of the advantages of good PSUs - they're much quieter! They're built with better quality components so can handle heat better.
 
inside250watt.jpg


That's my baby - it does not have much inside but it runs a pretty potent PC and it is older than most PSUs I know off.
 
It depends highly on your setup, I've had endless problems with PSU's but generally I build systems that are on the higher end of the scale.

Low end components don't generally use that much power.

@Rouxenator: What do you use your computer for? And why did you chuck the 7600GS? Put the 7600GS back in and start running some CPU/GPU intense applications. Everytime I had a PSU fail it was while putting load on the system (that is when it's not DOA).

Qwikslver said:
Antec is one of the best.
Click to expand...

Hmm, brother had one of those, only lasted a year, luckily it didn't damage anything but not worth the price IMHO. We got a cheap ass Codegen PSU and it's been running that exact same system for 3 years now, at 1/4 the price of the antec, doesn't say much about their build quality to me but perhaps we just got a bad batch.
 
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