Overclock.net banner
Cancel
Create thread New Forums

How often do power supplies "Take things out with it"?

Jump to Latest
1 - 14 of 14 Posts
M

Mercfh

· Registered
Joined
·
235 Posts
Discussion starter · #1 ·
I know you've all heard horror stories of a PSU going out and just destroying all the other components with it.....but how often does this actually happen? For instance with a good known PSU?

When they "die" is it usually gracefully or not so much?
 
#2 ·
My first Cooler Master Silent Pro M600 died after ~1+ week, I think it did it very gracefully
smile.gif
. I was closing a game that was in the startmenu and suddenly I heard a few clicks and everything shut off.

They doublechecked the PSU when I brought it back to the RMA department of the webshop and immediately replaced it. Still running the replacement after 2+ years and nothing seems to be taken down with it.

But I must add that 1 year later my gpu (6950) died (artifacts and driver errors which got worse over time), but no way I can claim my PSU being the cause of the gpu dying 1 year later.
 
Save
Reply Quote Rep+ Rep+
#3 ·
Usually when a power supply dies it's quietly. The electronics age, the voltages wander away from spec and the motherboard sees this when it goes to power on and rather than accept "bad" power, it will flick on for a fraction of a second, then turn right back off.

When a power supply fails spectacularly (which is, by itself rare; probably 1 in 50 from what I've worked on), it depends on the quality of the power supply and how/why it failed. If you drop a piece of metal into a live PSU, all bets are off, and I have seen them actually catch fire in this instance. If a cap pops in the PSU, there can be smoke, but usually nothing else goes with it. If a component fails in such a way as to INCREASE voltage/amperage output, and the over-volt/over-amperage protection doesn't catch it, it can take the component on the rail that's failing with it (motherboard, graphics card, etc), but usually only that one component.

I've literally replaced hundreds of power supplies over the years (mostly in off-the-shelf machines by HP, Apple, Dell, etc), I've had maybe 10 that took anything with it, and of those, all but 1 were off-brand or no-name power supplies - the 1 "name brand" failure was a 750W KingWin that took a socket 1366 EVGA board with it because under load the voltages would increase beyond spec and it fried the board.
 
#4 ·
A capacitor blows and dumps a lot of current.
 
Save
Reply Quote Rep+ Rep+
#5 ·
I bought a cheap Diablotek 500W PSU once, and it actually lasted for about a year (my system was probably sucking about 250W of juice). A month before it died the fan started spinning incredibly loud, and I got a Thermaltake TR2 500W to replace it (I still own the thermaltake, but i'm not using it now).
Based off of the name and general PSU quality, you would think that they were actually made by the devil.
biggrin.gif
 
Save
Reply Quote Rep+ Rep+
#7 ·
Thankfully it is very rare, in my 20 years or so building PC's I can count the bangs without taking my shoes off.

Mostly the supply just takes itself out, but in 5 or so cases, varying levels of damage occurred, ranging from mainboard and cpu dead, to slight damage that had me raking over parts for days trying to identify the culprit.
Having dealt with hundreds if not thousands of PC repairs, I am quite comfortable knowing that it doesn't happen too often, I do however really promote higher quality stable power supplies to customers and friends, because all too often that cheapo supply is the reason for the occasional crash or blue screen.

Most bangs btw were in the mid 2000''s with the whole Electrolyte scandal in caps. But that wasn't just PSU's
smile.gif
 
Discussion starter · #8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BakerMan1971 View Post

Thankfully it is very rare, in my 20 years or so building PC's I can count the bangs without taking my shoes off.

Mostly the supply just takes itself out, but in 5 or so cases, varying levels of damage occurred, ranging from mainboard and cpu dead, to slight damage that had me raking over parts for days trying to identify the culprit.
Having dealt with hundreds if not thousands of PC repairs, I am quite comfortable knowing that it doesn't happen too often, I do however really promote higher quality stable power supplies to customers and friends, because all too often that cheapo supply is the reason for the occasional crash or blue screen.

Most bangs btw were in the mid 2000''s with the whole Electrolyte scandal in caps. But that wasn't just PSU's
smile.gif
Click to expand...
Were they usually with crappy PSU's? that took other components out.
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercfh View Post

Were they usually with crappy PSU's? that took other components out.
Click to expand...
Not always, I have had mid-priced OCZ units fail even though they were fairly well reviewed (for the time). Well identified brands again from years back like Coolermaster's remember these brands used various different OEM's some good some bad, so it does depend on the model.

I also had a faulty AMD graphics card murder one of the pci-e outputs on an OCZ, it still 'wokred' but was unreliable and often wouldn't start after a reboot, the supply degraded further over time (I used it to get components to boot to test , which was probably a bad idea, but I was skint) eventually any machine it was on was instantly unbootable/unstable.

Failures as with anything can occur at any level, the warranty offered is usually one of the best things to look into, some companies offer 5 and 7 year warranties, with a payout for anything damaged by the PSU (after a rather lengthy RMA investigation) But it can cover at least some of the cost.

OCN while it has a lot of fanboys, does have a lot of great advice on power supplies, and I have learnt things from here and the Jonny Guru website which have improved my understanding of power supply selection and usage.

A quick search on a particular unit you are interested in, will no doubt cast a lot of light on performance and potential issues.
 
#11 ·
Yesterday I tested a power supply that came installed in a case. It was a name brand case, not some generic crap. The PSU was rated for 450W. When loaded to that level, the power supply failed quietly, but with an >500mV transient waveform on all rails that persisted several milliseconds.

This type of event can damage motherboards, graphics cards, and hard drives, with little to no visible damage.
 
Save
Reply Quote Rep+ Rep+
Discussion starter · #12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BakerMan1971 View Post

Not always, I have had mid-priced OCZ units fail even though they were fairly well reviewed (for the time). Well identified brands again from years back like Coolermaster's remember these brands used various different OEM's some good some bad, so it does depend on the model.

I also had a faulty AMD graphics card murder one of the pci-e outputs on an OCZ, it still 'wokred' but was unreliable and often wouldn't start after a reboot, the supply degraded further over time (I used it to get components to boot to test , which was probably a bad idea, but I was skint) eventually any machine it was on was instantly unbootable/unstable.

Failures as with anything can occur at any level, the warranty offered is usually one of the best things to look into, some companies offer 5 and 7 year warranties, with a payout for anything damaged by the PSU (after a rather lengthy RMA investigation) But it can cover at least some of the cost.

OCN while it has a lot of fanboys, does have a lot of great advice on power supplies, and I have learnt things from here and the Jonny Guru website which have improved my understanding of power supply selection and usage.

A quick search on a particular unit you are interested in, will no doubt cast a lot of light on performance and potential issues.
Click to expand...
Oh the PSU companies will cover damaged equipment? that's pretty nice!
 
#14 ·
I was playing some Starcraft 2 once and I started smelling this weird smell, like something burning, but I didn't turn off the computer 'till the end of the game. As I did, I started seeing some smoke coming up from the top of the computer: my OCZ StealthXStream 700 W had just died. I RMA'd it and got a new one (it was almost 2 years down the road) and, since they already had released the "V2" and the other one was out of stock, I got that for free.

To this point I still use the same hardware in another computer and it still works, so I had more luck than sense and everything went ok
smile.gif
 
1 - 14 of 14 Posts
About this Discussion
13 Replies
9 Participants
Last post:
MrDucktape
Overclock.net
posts
28M
members
562K
Since
2004
The premier forum for overclocking experts and enthusiasts. Discuss hardware optimization, custom builds, benchmarking, cooling solutions, and pushing the boundaries of computing performance. From beginner guides to extreme overclocking, join our technical community to master system tuning.
Full Forum Listing
Explore Our Forums
Intel CPUs Hardware News NVIDIA PC Gaming Water Cooling