How long have you used your power supply?

I recently got rid of my old Silverstone Olympia OP650 unit. Used that in Pentium-D, C2D, and C2Q systems up through 2013 or so when I built my 2600K box and the 12V rail started dropping a little at full load. Kept it around as a testing unit for a long time after that but finally decided last year that even as a diagnostic PSU, a 12/13-year old unit had to go.

The 750 TX V1 replacement PSU is still going strong in my brother's desktop, but it's about 8 or 9 years old itself and probably time to replace it too.
 
From Nov 2011: Thermaltake Toughpower 1050W - still alive... not sure how far gone the voltages are, but it seems to be keeping an o/c'd i7 860 mostly happy. It will be forcefully retired in a year or less I surmise.

It has made it further than many others I've had in the past, so ymmv.
 
I'm not sure I've ever had a PSU go bad on me... I did have an Antec PSU that gave me some issues but they were more manufacturing defects than anything. I did have to contact the BBB to get them to warranty it though.
 
I did have an Antec PSU that gave me some issues but they were more manufacturing defects than anything. I did have to contact the BBB to get them to warranty it though.

Antec from the late 90s up until 2006-2008 used shitty capacitors and flawed designs, which resulted in extremely high failure rates. The SL and Basiq series had horrific overheating issues due to having an improperly set fan:heat curves, so they'd basically cook. They also used predominantly Fuhjyyu capacitors which had 100% failure rates. The Smartpower, Truepower and Earthwatts didn't have overheating issues, but they used trash capacitors the same. There was a period of time where I was recapping dozen or so of these units monthly.
 
EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 G2

ordered: 2/17/2015, installed shortly there after

Still working strong here without issues in my main rig. Recently made sleeved cables for it. 10/10 would recommend.
 
My old OCZ 1250w lasted 10 years before it finally gave up. Got an EVGA G3 850w to replace it.
 
I wouldn't reuse a 5/6 year old powersupply on a new build. Especially if you're expecting to use over 50% of it's rated capacity. However I've had power supplies last well over 10 years.
 
I'm not even keeping track of it. The time of cheap chinese psus that would blow up and take hw with them is long gone. Haven't heard that kind of horror story since the mid 2000s.
 
I'm not even keeping track of it. The time of cheap chinese psus that would blow up and take hw with them is long gone. Haven't heard that kind of horror story since the mid 2000s.

This problem never went away, dunno what rock you're living under.

I still regularly see Chinese IEDs in customer machines. The story is always the same, customer spends all of their money on other components and gets a $20 special that eventually goes bang during a gaming session and kills the motherboard and/or the video card.
 
This problem never went away, dunno what rock you're living under.

I still regularly see Chinese IEDs in customer machines. The story is always the same, customer spends all of their money on other components and gets a $20 special that eventually goes bang during a gaming session and kills the motherboard and/or the video card.
Yes, you see them in garbage pre-built systems. But if you buy a branded PSU for your custom build you shouldn't worry about this. I thought this was [H] and not wal-mart customer support.

So I stand by my statement: I'd absolutely re-use my PSU while it's rated power is 20% more than the expected draw of my system, regardless of age.

The only reason I switched PSUs last time is that it was easier to sell my old system as a complete build, and I could pick up a new PSU at a bargain price. Otherwise I'd have absolutely re-used my about 8 year old PSU.
 
Yes, you see them in garbage pre-built systems. But if you buy a branded PSU for your custom build you shouldn't worry about this. I thought this was [H] and not wal-mart customer support.

If you're suggesting all branded PSUs are good..

Cool Max, Xion, Apevia, HEC, Raidmax, Logisys and other trash on Newegg and Amazon would like to have a word with you.

Just because we know what is good and bad, doesn't mean everyone does. [H] is not the center of the universe.

I do lots of deskside and individual computer support, I see these things all the time in machines the customers built themselves.
 
If you're suggesting all branded PSUs are good..

Cool Max, Xion, Apevia, HEC, Raidmax, Logisys and other trash on Newegg and Amazon would like to have a word with you.
Don't be deliberately obtuse. Branded means a well known and respected brand. Not something I never even heard about. The only non-branded stuff by that definition are oem parts which an individual can't buy anyway.

If you have any of those psus running a system that cost more than $100 I'd recommend you replace them regardless of age.


Just because we know what is good and bad, doesn't mean everyone does. [H] is not the center of the universe.

I do lots of deskside and individual computer support, I see these things all the time in machines the customers built themselves.
Wait, let me check. OK, yes I'm still on [H], so what is your point? Why would you give advice on [H] to people who are a billion worlds away?
 
Don't be deliberately obtuse. Branded means a well known and respected brand. Not something I never even heard about. The only non-branded stuff by that definition are oem parts which an individual can't buy anyway.

Great job there moving the goal post. You're the one who inferred that all branded PSUs are OK, no stipulations attached, such as only brands you personally know about.

Wait, let me check. OK, yes I'm still on [H], so what is your point? Why would you give advice on [H] to people who are a billion worlds away?

Who is giving advice to who? You're the one with a massive ego that seemingly thinks nobody outside of [H] is worthy.
 
Great job there moving the goal post. You're the one who inferred that all branded PSUs are OK, no stipulations attached, such as only brands you personally know about.
You not using the common language where "branded" means "a well known and respected brand" is not me moving the goalpost. If branded means everything that has a name printed on it, then what would be non-branded? By your definition Adidous is branded clothing then?


Who is giving advice to who? You're the one with a massive ego that seemingly thinks nobody outside of [H] is worthy.
So you're giving advice to people not on [H] on [H]?
 
You not using the common language where "branded" means "a well known and respected brand" is not me moving the goalpost. If branded means everything that has a name printed on it, then what would be non-branded? By your definition Adidous is branded clothing then?

A brand is a name on a product, or a manufacturer of a product. It is no more or no less a brand if the public does or doesn't know about it, the same goes if you do or don't know about it. Non-branded products would be items with no identifiable information on them of who made them.

So you're giving advice to people not on [H] on [H]?

What are you even talking about? It's like you're stuck in some sort of weird logic loop you created.
 
Bought a used Corsair TX750 in 2009 and it's still going strong. Moved it into a build for a friend a few years ago.
 
bought a TX950 and it died. sent it in and they gave me an ax1200i as a replacement.
 
I used a Raidmax power supply for about 8 years before it went bad so yeah they last a long time I bought 4-5 power supplies since then none of them went bad I sold a old Corsair that wasn't modular because basically it looked like a spiders nest in any case because it wasn't Modular so sold it like for 10.00 at a Rummage Sale. I'm using a EVGA G3 now thinking of buying the new EVGA G5 750 watt with the green fan plate but I really don't need it.
 
Funny that this thread is here as I'm wondering if/when I should replace the psu in my media/file server. It's a 750watt PCP&C psu that I bought on 12/30/2008. It's been on pretty much 24/7 for just shy of 11 years running 14 hard drives.

Apparently it was a popular one! :D

Still running an original "orange" PC Power and Cooling 750w in one of my older boxes.. so prob around 11-12yrs

10 years.

Edit; it's a PC Power & Cooling 750w unit.

I used that PSU through three builds and it is still in service at a buddies house who got it as a freebie when his gaming rig went down.
 
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Funny that this thread is here as I'm wondering if/when I should replace the psu in my media/file server. It's a 750watt PCP&C psu that I bought on 12/30/2008. It's been on pretty much 24/7 for just shy of 11 years running 14 hard drives.

Apparently it was a popular one! :D
Might depend if the data is valuable or not.
 
Currently using A Evga 1000 watt T2 psu, its a great psu and cant beat that 10 year warranty. I have had it for 3 months now and before that i had a Evga 1300 watt psu for like 8 months
 
EVGA 750 G2 - bought in 2014. Only ever had one issue - a wire pulled from a crimp on the PCIe connector cable, and EVGA promptly sent out a new cable - no questions.

Had a TX750M in my server/NAS and it went up in smoke... twice over the course of a year. Swapped it out with an Enermax Platimax 550 I got super cheap, and it's been going strong for over a year.
 
I have not yet had one go bad, just a fan in an ancient Antec one but that was an easy fix. Typically I upgrade out of the need for dedicated power cable types when they change or for more power as I upgrade.
I think my PC Power and Cooling 550W I used the longest with two system's getting life out of it for around 8 years. When my friends PC went out I pulled it and sold it him where it's still chugging along.

My current 760 watt one has me a little worried when I want to over clock further but I think I can only properly attribute a handful of courtesy boots to power when I was pushing it.
 
My psu is a Corsair 850 something will be 7 years old next spring. Still chugging along fine. Everything is still quiet no whine or USB noise whatsoever.
 
Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w from 2008 still running great but I would like to go from semi modular to full modular.
 
My Silverstone ST45SF-G 450W SFX12V has been working since October 2015 without a problem. It's survived a crappy mobo with a restart issue and is now powering a rock-solid Skylake (i5-6600 + GTX1060) system I've had since that time. No complaints at all.

After having two lower-end PSUs die on me back in the earlier 2000s, ever since then I do not skimp on PSUs
 
I ran a SeaSonic X750 unit for about 7.5 years before something broke and it died on me. Before that I tended to only keep power supplies for the build I bought them for because I was usually not buying top shelf ones due to budget limits. Now I tend to buy power supplies with the goal of using in 2+ builds since I am buying high end units.
 
Ran my NXZT Hale 1000w for ~6yrs then thought it was time to upgrade when I did the TR build. Settled on a Corsair HX1000.

Humorously enough, I had convinced myself to upgrade thinking the Hale only had a single EPS and confirmed it by not seeing another one with the modular cables. As I was tearing the old build apart I realized the other EPS cable was not modular and was ziptied neatly behind the back panel. Def a Homer Simpson moment.
 
I had an XFX 850W silver rated that lasted for 10 years before biting the dust, I would say I got my money's worth out of it lol.
 
I recently realized I've had my ANTEC NeoPower HE650 for quite a long time. Found the order receipt in my email from ZipZoomFly (remember them?!).

Nov 8, 2007

before that, I was using a no name power supply which came with a case.

The NeoPower is currently powering an overclocked 7600k in an Raijintek Metis ITX case. Its whisper quiet.

It was first used to power an Athlon 64 X-2. Then a core 2 quad Q9300. Then an Phenom II X6 1055T.

Here's a Newegg page with specs and pictures
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16817371011

Its only ever been out of service for a few months, during a time at which I thought some issues were power supply related (they weren't). I bought an Antec Earthwatts EA650 from Amazon, to fill in, on Nov 15, 2010

https://www.newegg.com/antec-earthwatts-ea650-650w/p/N82E16817371015

I haven't used that in a long time. But I still have it. Its nearly as good. Just not modular and plain gray.
Holy shit. Wasn't that Antec the power supply that was notorious for failing due to capacitor plague? I had one of those, and loved it right up until it died a premature death, after only a year or two. You must have the only one left in the whole world.

I used to be pretty cavalier about power supplies, and firmly in the "use them until they stop working camp." If you read the thread I made in the graphics card forum a few months ago about repairing GTX 690s, though, I eventually figured out that it was my old power supply in my test bench that killed not one, but two of the cards I bought to use as working examples. I suspect the 690 is unusually vulnerable to this, thanks to a particular quirk of its design, but this seems like it could be a pretty insidious issue with a lot of other cards, and most users wouldn't have several identical cards to sacrifice in the name of figuring it out.

So, I think I'm going to move to more like a 5 or 6-ish year life cycle for my power supplies, especially if they live in particularly hardworking or expensive systems. It wasn't the end of the world if a power supply killed an already-dead graphics card I was working on for shits and giggles, but it would totally suck to kill a $1200 2080 Ti because I was too cheap to replace a $150 power supply.
 
I just used my existing 12+ year old Thermaltake Toughpower 1000w in my new Ryzen 9 3900X build. So far it's completely solid even during torture tests. It was simple really. If I had to factor in the cost of a new PSU I probably would have had to settle for a 3800X or 3700X instead. It's a gamble I suppose, but I have not lost yet.
 
Holy shit. Wasn't that Antec the power supply that was notorious for failing due to capacitor plague? I had one of those, and loved it right up until it died a premature death, after only a year or two. You must have the only one left in the whole world.

I used to be pretty cavalier about power supplies, and firmly in the "use them until they stop working camp." If you read the thread I made in the graphics card forum a few months ago about repairing GTX 690s, though, I eventually figured out that it was my old power supply in my test bench that killed not one, but two of the cards I bought to use as working examples. I suspect the 690 is unusually vulnerable to this, thanks to a particular quirk of its design, but this seems like it could be a pretty insidious issue with a lot of other cards, and most users wouldn't have several identical cards to sacrifice in the name of figuring it out.

So, I think I'm going to move to more like a 5 or 6-ish year life cycle for my power supplies, especially if they live in particularly hardworking or expensive systems. It wasn't the end of the world if a power supply killed an already-dead graphics card I was working on for shits and giggles, but it would totally suck to kill a $1200 2080 Ti because I was too cheap to replace a $150 power supply.
I don't think its that one. But....who knows!
 
Holy shit. Wasn't that Antec the power supply that was notorious for failing due to capacitor plague? I had one of those, and loved it right up until it died a premature death, after only a year or two. You must have the only one left in the whole world.

I used to be pretty cavalier about power supplies, and firmly in the "use them until they stop working camp." If you read the thread I made in the graphics card forum a few months ago about repairing GTX 690s, though, I eventually figured out that it was my old power supply in my test bench that killed not one, but two of the cards I bought to use as working examples. I suspect the 690 is unusually vulnerable to this, thanks to a particular quirk of its design, but this seems like it could be a pretty insidious issue with a lot of other cards, and most users wouldn't have several identical cards to sacrifice in the name of figuring it out.

So, I think I'm going to move to more like a 5 or 6-ish year life cycle for my power supplies, especially if they live in particularly hardworking or expensive systems. It wasn't the end of the world if a power supply killed an already-dead graphics card I was working on for shits and giggles, but it would totally suck to kill a $1200 2080 Ti because I was too cheap to replace a $150 power supply.

I never heard of any issues with the Neo HE650 and he's definitely not the only one with one still running. I've had mine as long as he's had his and it's still running in my main system. The last Antec unit which had systematic problems that I'm aware of is an old 430watt ATX supply from the Athlon and P4 days. I had one of them which died and after having mine die on me I looked it up and it seemed to be the same problem with all of them. I don't remember the model number, though.
 
Somebody was using my power supply in 1999. The only repair was to fix solder joints on the transformer, which may have broken during shipping. All Japanese capacitors, all original.
 
I'm still running Corsair's very first power supply, the HX620. I bought it when it was released.
 
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Holy shit. Wasn't that Antec the power supply that was notorious for failing due to capacitor plague? I had one of those, and loved it right up until it died a premature death, after only a year or two. You must have the only one left in the whole world.

Antec PSUs were garbage up until around 2008 when they finally started turning around.

From the late 90s until 2004, Antec primarily used cheap trash capacitors from a company called Fuhjyyu in most of their PSUs. These capacitors had defective electrolyte which was intolerant to heat and would break down and cause the capacitor to explode/vent. Further exacerbating this problem is a design flaw present in almost all of their PSUs at the time, where they were designed to be quiet and therefore wouldn't run the fan until the internal temperature was as hot as the surface of the sun. I remember diagnosing PCs with Antec PSUs and putting your hand near the fan exhaust would feel like putting your hand into a smokin' hot oven. The case of the PSU would be too hot to touch.

These units can be recapped with quality capacitors, but you'll have to mount some capacitors in different locations on extended legs because Fuhjyyu capacitors were often non-standard sizes. One example is they had a 3300uF 16v capacitor in a 8x40mm can, but everyone else either used 10x30 or 12.5x25. But you'll also have to perform a mod on the fan controller daughterboard to alter the fan curve. I didn't bother doing this most of the time because the daughterboard had like 30 pins, and instead I'd just do a power re-route to the fan header so it always got 12v. The fan rework and a recap would make these units rock solid and I never got one back out of the dozens I repaired. These units were commonly sold under the "Smartpower" moniker.

From 2005-2008 Antec came out with newer PSU models like the Earthwatts, Truepower and Basiq. These power supplies used a mix of junk capacitors from brands like OST, Teapo, and United Chemi-Con. These capacitors had the same problem as Fuhjyyu and would at most last about a year before they blew their tops. Recapping these also made them solid units, and they didn't have the shitty fan control problem so they were easy fixes.

Sadly the saga of shitty capacitors continue to this day. While I don't recap nearly the number of things I did 10-15 years ago, there are still reputable brands using junk capacitors. Today I spent a couple of hours reworking a CWT SFX PSU because the "Jun Fu" caps on the controller board failed, causing the PSU to act erratically. It also had a couple of OST and Teapo caps that had also failed on the main board, all were either electrically leaky or had high ESR.
 
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