Is using 10-years old power supplies a concern?

blackacidevil said:
My Antec True Power Quattro 850W just celebrated its 10th birthday. Re-used in multiple systems that were on 24/7.
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My god so did mine. The ADDA 80mm fan bearings are noisy, but voltages still good. One heck of an Enhance built unit.

Now, I do have a new in box Enermax Revolution 87+ 1000w to replace it, but...its still going.
 
I dunno who builds the Allied unit, but I've a 350watter that is still powering my son's 775 rig. Dam dual 80mm fans make a helluva racket. I yanked one, but the other one is pretty silent. Rails are still spot on too.
 
If they work, then it should be ok. But there can be a higher chance for it to die on you randomly or damage the components you have connected with.
 
Still have a good ol' Corsair HX620 purchased late '06 that I've moved through a few builds. Currently driving my sister's rig, rockin' a 3770 / GTX 760 combo at the moment, no sweat.
 
Oniigumo said:
Still have a good ol' Corsair HX620 purchased late '06 that I've moved through a few builds. Currently driving my sister's rig, rockin' a 3770 / GTX 760 combo at the moment, no sweat.
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I have a HX520 myself and it is an utter POS. It has been faulty since I purchased it but the fault was so difficult to work out that I never got it fixed while it was in warranty.

Some of these PSU's have faults with the power good signal which can cause system instability when the PSU powers up such as from standby. Most times it is stable but very occasionally it causes system lock ups or in some cases application crashes due to unstable power after the PSU has signal power is good.

I had a Tagan TG480-U01 which recently failed on me after around 16 to 17 years. I now need a replacement for both PSU's.
 
RedDwarf said:
I have a HX520 myself and it is an utter POS. It has been faulty since I purchased it but the fault was so difficult to work out that I never got it fixed while it was in warranty.

Some of these PSU's have faults with the power good signal which can cause system instability when the PSU powers up such as from standby. Most times it is stable but very occasionally it causes system lock ups or in some cases application crashes due to unstable power after the PSU has signal power is good.

I had a Tagan TG480-U01 which recently failed on me after around 16 to 17 years. I now need a replacement for both PSU's.
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Im just ditching a 9-10 yr old Antec true power trio, prob not a great psu to start. Have had a few issues recently which could be anything but the psu just had to go. I was planning on the Corsair TX550M for $40 AR on newegg but found a better deal with an amex offer on Amazon for the Seasonic Focus 550w for $33AR. Those were the 2 bang for buck Gold 550w solid psu's I narrowed down to
 
Yes the Seasonic Focus line do look like good PSU's. The only problem that I had with them was the connections with only 6 SATA and 3 Molex but it does look like more could be added because there are extra connections available on the PSU but without cables. If only I can find a place that sell the extra cables.
 
I still have a perfectly fine PC Power and Cooling 610W from ~2007 running just fine. Its run quads overclocked at 1.4v for many years, not to mention an nvidia TITAN and several SLI setups as well.
 
I have an Enermax Revolution 1050 I think I got around 2009 and it's been through xfire 4890, SLI GTX 295, Quadfire 5870s (heavy mining), SLI GTX 690s, Xfire R9 290s (some mining). It still runs great and shows no signs of stopping, one of the best PC investments I have made.
 
I have an XFX black edition (750w) that I bought in 2010. It has been through many builds, I have wanted to upgrade but it just keeps on plugging away.
 
Pfft 10 year old.

I have a 486 DX33 from 1994. That little AT PSU is still going strong! Although to be fair, if the PSU's go bad, it's usually the caps. If they are bulging, doing a recap will greatly extend its life.

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i have a gigabyte 720W superb PSU from 2008 (13 years old and still working as 1st day) running pretty much everyday since 2008 till now, daily like 16 hours to 18 horus per day, its on a intel i5 2nd gen 2500k with radeon 480 8gb atm, was tihnking maybe when its its end it will make a smoke or something and even burn the motherobard off with it or maybe make fire ? i got a feeling it might go another 10 years but, it cna aswell make smoke or burn as i saw other PSU did on google. anyway best PSU ever 13 years and going , amazing, no weied noise no diferent voltages its fan still working as normal. motherboard im using that i5 is asus maximus 4 genz gen 3 in case someone knows if it cna burn it when PSU dies.
 
Oniigumo said:
Still have a good ol' Corsair HX620 purchased late '06 that I've moved through a few builds. Currently driving my sister's rig, rockin' a 3770 / GTX 760 combo at the moment, no sweat.
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I still have this PSU running in my moms computer, no issues as of yet. Does make me wonder though since it's now pushing 14 years old!
 
Susquehannock said:
PC Power & Cooling 425w unit bought march 31, 2004 for $140 running in WinXP rig constantly. Tested under load earlier this year and still within 2% or so on all three rails. Same main board, GPU card, and RAM used throughout. Clean input from industrial UPS is no doubt responsible for longevity of system as a whole.
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^^that was a nforce2 system. Switched the above PSU to a socket 939 build with 3850 AGP card and same RAM. Still holding about 2% on multimeter with the extra load. So that is 17 years and still going.
 
EchoWars said:
Recommendation from a old tech: If you don't have any confidence in what you're doing, put the supply in and if everything runs, call it 'good' and get on with your life. Seen too much chit blowed up from misplaced probes or funky $10 Harbor Freight meters.
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Funny story when I showed up on day one as a QC specialist for a MV Industrial Switchgear company we had a newbie show up with a cheap meter we told him to throw it out and go get a PO for a $400 Fluke 87 series meter.
 
i just noticed i am still running an original PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 510w ATX. build date is roughly 2003. it started out life running Abit Socket A rigs, currently it is powering a ryzen 1500 system, with a 1060. i guess technically it could register to vote.

NOTE: i have SATA to PCIE adapters on it and i swapped on a 24 pin ATX connector and added the wiring for it at one point in its' life.
 
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Zedicus said:
i just noticed i am still running an original PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 510w ATX. build date is roughly 2003. it started out life running Abit Socket A rigs, currently it is powering a ryzen 1500 system, with a 1060. i guess technically it could register to vote.

NOTE: i have SATA to PCIE adapters on it and i swapped on a 24 pin ATX connector and added the wiring for it at one point in its' life.
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VERY surprised that thing still works. Many other PSU brands of that vintage have long since died from the capacitor plague, Antec probably being the worst. I just recapped an Antec SL-350 last week and went the other way with it. Converted the harness from ATX to AT with a special soft start header for an FMVTowns machine. Customer has the machine loaded up with cards and drives and the original very anemic 200W PSU couldn't keep up, along with everything also having failing capacitors. Still right in the middle of replacing 291 caps in it and several other things for the same customer.

If you haven't opened your PSU up in awhile, you might want to do so. Capacitors in a furnace for 18 years doesn't do them any favors.
 
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About that PC P&C I'm surprised it works well for slightly another reason - if you look at the rails' spec, it's rated at 40A on the 5V rail, and "only" 34A on the 12V one.
Stuff beyond K7 normally didn't need 5V as much as they relied on the 12V regulator.
 
Zedicus said:
i just noticed i am still running an original PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 510w ATX. build date is roughly 2003.
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My suggestion would be to not even think about it, look at it, write about it, until you have the replacement in hand. That thing is just waiting for you to have some crucial computation or other need and it's going to short out and smoke the entire PC. (and if not, it will welcome a decent retirement...)
 
Its fine, it was recapped 10 years ago, and i rebalanced it with a good volt meter when i replaced the atx cable like 2 years ago. And a ryzen 1500 is not like a high power gaming rig. Occasionally i have a 1060 or some mid range gpu in it, but the entire system load is like 250 watt. Ssd and no optical drive, really its pretty light usage.
 
Trust me. It's not worth the risk. I just built a new system with my 10 year old psu. Ran a benchmark, heard a pop, computer shut down, then I smelled smoke.

I fried my gtx 3080 and one of my ram sticks. Still running test to see if anything else is damaged.
 
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Nightwing749 said:
Trust me. It's not worth the risk. I just built a new system with my 10 year old psu. Ran a benchmark, heard a pop, computer shut down, then I smelled smoke.

I fried my gtx 3080 and one of my ram sticks. Still running test to see if anything else is damaged.
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Sure it's the memory module and not the motherboard? I've dealt with dozens of lightning damaged and PSU thermonuclear computers over the decades and the RAM always survives. Like I've had motherboards with multiple craters blown in it and the memory modules were fine. Video cards on the other hand are always one of the first things to go along with the motherboard if it has a PCIe power connection.
 
i have known people that have had PSUs fail and dump 120v across the MB and PC parts. i have abused and killed a number of PSUs and when mine fail they always short to external ground and do not harm ANY components. my THEORY is the surge suppressor that the PSU is plugged into. I have ALWAYS put good surge suppressors (tripp lite ISOBAR) or AIO UPS on my computers. The people that i have seen have component failure usually have a wal-mart power splitter and some of those don't have the ground pin connected to anything.
 
Yeah. I'm sure it's the memory module. I replaced my psu with a Seagate 850w platinum px-850 and plugged in my gtx 1080ti.

I have a msi board with the easy debug lights. I tried booting with that module by itself in slot two and it won't boot, dram error light. I tried the other slots and resetting the CMOS for kicks, still a no go. However, it will boot with the other module.

Also, I was using a APC surge protector, purchased from Lowes.
 
Zedicus said:
i have known people that have had PSUs fail and dump 120v across the MB and PC parts. i have abused and killed a number of PSUs and when mine fail they always short to external ground and do not harm ANY components. my THEORY is the surge suppressor that the PSU is plugged into. I have ALWAYS put good surge suppressors (tripp lite ISOBAR) or AIO UPS on my computers. The people that i have seen have component failure usually have a wal-mart power splitter and some of those don't have the ground pin connected to anything.
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I only heard of this happening with cheap PSUs.
ie they dont have enough protection or the protection they claim to have doesnt work/exist.
Can you confirm if any of those destructive failures are with reputable PSUs from a well reviewed brand?
 
one was an old antec, and one was a very low end old coolmax. the guy said the lamp that was plugged in to the same power strip as the coolmax flickered when that one popped, and ruined the MB.
this was quite a few years ago so rather you consider old antec, and especially low end old coolmax, as good or not, is anyones guess.

Still, had there been a GOOD surge suppressor, the voltage dump would have not went all over the components and out to other devices.
 
A good PS is really not that much. Just spring for a good new one.
 
Zedicus said:
so rather you consider old antec, and especially low end old coolmax, as good or not, is anyones guess.
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Old antec PSUs had design faults but weren't terrible if fixed. Coolmax on the other hand was always dumpster trash tier. None of their PSUs are safe to use. I remember getting one in some donated system to me and it quite literally exploded under almost no load and took out the circuit breaker. Opened it up to find that the design was about on par with Logisys or Deer power supplies. The main switching mosfets decided they didn't want to exist anymore and turned into black skidmarks.
 
The coolmax aluminum line with active pfc were really good design. They werent coolmax originals. But they worked well. Any of there grey box PSUs were not worth the metal they are made of.
 
RedDwarf said:
If only I can find a place that sell the extra cables.
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Try Cablemod.com. I ordered a full set of cables for my Seasonic and there were options to add more cables if desired. I ordered them to get the whole set to be sleeved, but if you're just looking for one or two, I'm sure they can help you. Or, if you're just wanting the extra for things behind the motherboard tray, you can use the sleeved set and then use the original ones for things that aren't seen.
 
If it's old group regulated PSU I would avoid using it on a modern system. They don't support low power states, and tend to have high ripple at high loads.

I don't see how a surge protector could save your system from a bad PSU. Surge protector is supposed to protect you from bad input, not bad output. It's likely the people who spent the money on an expensive surge protector, also spent it on a good PSU.
 
I have a corsair tx 750 that I've been using for sli and cfx rigs for over 10 years, still going strong in my 3090 rig, only problem is that it was now the loudest component so I just got a be quiet dark power 750 to fill its shoes.
 
Bumping this thread, I recently inherited (back) my computer that has this power supply in it. Should I be worried about this thing exploding? Looking at the internal components, things look ok. It's going to act as a file server. It's pretty amazing this thing is still working.
 
techie81 said:
Bumping this thread, I recently inherited (back) my computer that has this power supply in it. Should I be worried about this thing exploding? Looking at the internal components, things look ok. It's going to act as a file server. It's pretty amazing this thing is still working.
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I wouldn't worry too much about an explosion but a failure is far more likely now vs 5 years ago. I would just keep a quality back up handy( as is standard for any older psu).
 
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