Power Overwhelming

How long does your PS last?

  • Less than 3 months

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • 3-6 months

    Votes: 1 1.7%

  • 6 months to 1 year

    Votes: 3 5.2%

  • A few years

    Votes: 31 53.4%

  • Too [H]ard to Die !!! (Die hard part 10)

    Votes: 23 39.7%
  • Total voters
    58
S

Shmuckety

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 19, 2005
Messages
1,919
I have had a few problems with my main rig and I want some opinions from the [H]orde. My main rig has the following:

3.2 prescott @3.7
2GB patriot ram
BFG 6800GT
mini aquagate 120 water cooling
4 HDD + DVD-RW

My antec trupower 2.0 550W died 6 months ago after being used for 6 months. I sent it back under warranty (took a month) and in the mean time I bought a Hiper 580W. I recently started to get BSODs at random (twice in a week). My Hiper then died on me. By this time I had a new Antec 550W and I sent the Hiper back under warranty.

My question is this...Do I need a stronger power supply or are the PS's just shitty quality and I should expect this to keep happening? How long does you power supply usually last?
 
Your psu is fine. I don't really like the Hiper, but it's a known fact that the underpinnings are solid and that it works well. Of course, the modular plug and lack of ground wires, the bling, are debatable.

For the record, I run an AMD opteron 146 @ 3 ghz, 4x512 ram, a 7800gt, and 5 hard drives, and I have no problems with my Sunbeam NUUO 550, which is also based on an Andyson platform, but with some differences. It draws a total of 119w from the wall. Your pc draws a bit more since it has a Prescott, but it won't be a huge amount more.

Look elsewhere for your problems.
 
I've only had 1 PSU die on me. It was an Antec 300W running 3 hard drives, 2 optical drives, 3x512MB RAM, 5 pci cards, ATi 9600 Pro, and my AMD 2800 (Barton) was OCed to 2.3GHz. Ran that for several months. Ran like a tank until I smelled it burning and eventually gave up its soul.
 
I have not yet had a psu die on me.
my earlier machines with the original Athlons and Tbirds had either Antec psus or enermax...Even the old sparkle 350w and 400w units I installed in family computers are running strong after 5 years.

But, I had a FSP 530 W psu for 3 years, it powered a lot of upgrades, and never died, just only had the old 20-pin connector. So now it's sitting in the closet.

Had this Enhance unit for about 1.5 years now, and haven't had any problems.
 
I've owned a few power supplies.

Codegen 300w (hey, I was a n00b :p back in the day...) - backup PSU, still works fine.
Antec TruePower 430w - still going strong (since 2004) in a friend's system.
Ultra V-Series 500w - worked fine as a hold-over until I got the Corsair. Runs a bit loud, but has (surprisingly) rock solid rails. Out of 4 I've purchased for budget builds, each is still going strong, but quality control has varied widely - some have noticeable coil whine.
Ultra V-Series 350w - running 24/7 in my secondary box. Some coil whine. Looking for a replacement.
Sunbeamtech NUUO 550w - died after a year in a small/hot SuperLANBoy case. AthlonXPs give off a ton of heat, and Fuhjyuu caps don't like heat. RMA replacement is in BBQ's rig. :)
Corsair HX520 - put simply, better than all of the above combined.


Systems powered by the Antec, Corsair, and Sunbeamtech were overclocked (respectively) heavily, moderately, and slightly. I've been pleasantly surprised by the lack of PSU casualties.
 
L&C 350w in the P4. Died, taking out the whole rig
FSP 300w. Went from Athlon t-bird to athlon 64 to P4 part II, and now it's in my P4 server
OCZ Powerstream 420w. Ran quite warm, but very well. Didn't like the green glow. This only ran my Athlon 64
Sunbeam NUUO 550w. RMA replacement from JaYp146. I keep it running cool (<31 exhaust) and in the few months I've owned it, no problems yet.
 
My case has never reached 30 C degrees according to motherboard monitor. What are your suggestions for possible causes of my 2 PSU fatalities?
 
NordicRX8 said:
I agree.

Make sure you have (make) a good backup (soon)!

hows the fluid level of that Aquagate? (leaks???)
Click to expand...

No problems with the aquagate, not really possible to check the fluid level since its a closed system. Its still keeping my prescott under 51C under full load.
 
My Antec Truepower 1.0 has lasted me over 3 years (3y4m) on continous 24/7 operation. Last time I turned off my pc was in december when I went on vacation lol. I restart my pc weekly just incase, but psu stays on. It is truely a beast. I couldn't belive it when people were saying they were having problems with their antec PSU's and then an issue arose with the antec psu's that came with a particular case that was really bad on 3.3v or something. Anyways, when I bought this psu (Jan 04), 2 companies were looked at the most for PSUs (PC P&C, Antec). Antec PSUs have taken a downward spiral ever since then I guess...
 
In the last seven years I've had close to forty power supplies. Some I've bought, some I've reviewed. Out of all of those, though whenever I think of "My PSU" the first one that comes to mind in my trusty Antec True Blue 480W. It lasted through five or six different cases, four different cooling systems, two GPU's and a mobo RMA all in the period of four years.

It's funny the attachments that you gain towards inanimate objects isn't it? I haven't used that power supply in six months but I still think of it as my primary PSU whenever someone asks "What do you use for power?". I actually have to stop and think no, that's not right... I'm using Brand X now.
 
Too bad i'm going to be forced to give it up this month for a new build. It's a great PSU, I just wish Antec would make something EXACTLY like this with 1kw and quad sli support? My pc is still fast, but I want to see how fast those C2Ds are :D Can't stick on P4 forever.
 
Still very unsure what happened to my power supplies. I guess I will have to wait and see if this new Antec holds up.
 
All the power supplies that I've used for building PCs for myself, friends, or relatives in the past 10 years have been solid and I have used many brands too (Sparkle, Enhance, Enermax, Vantec, Thermaltake, etc...). However, I almost always go for more power than what the system needed and avoided the extremely cheap models.
 
These are my first real psu problems ever (aside from a 400W antec that did not have enough juice to power a system, not really the psu's fault). 550W should be plenty for my system.

 
How's this for luck:

From generic units included with cheap cases, Sparkles, Enermaxs, and Antecs, I've never had a power supply die in my personal machine until this last system build. My PSU of choice? A PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 Express/SLI. Happened about five months after it was installed. As if I saw that one coming... :eek:

On a more pleasant note, the company had me up and running again within four days!
 
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