A friend of mine has an extra PSU he's willing to give me for free, and according to the extreme power supply calculator it's more than enough, but just to check I changed the settings to "peak load" and "50% aging" or whatever, and I went over the "watt limit". Is this likely to be a problem? What exactly does the amount of watts for a PSU mean? (I don't know much about electricity, to be honest) How much damage would it cause to go over the rated amount, and should I just spend the money to have extra headroom? (I'd rather not have to do this unless it's likely to damage other components... if the PSU itself dies, all it means is I need to buy a new one, but they seem to have a thing for catching fire.) Also, power supplies ordered online even from reliable sites seem to have high death rates, and there aren't many stores around that will have a good selection for good prices.
Just wondering... (PSU question)
- Thread starter Lance
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- Feb 19, 2009
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lets do this the easy way , what r u running and how big is this psu ?
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A watt is the measurement of the amount of energy used to accomplish work (this can be physical work, electric work, etc.). To put it in perspective a typical incandescent light bulb uses about 60 watts of electricity per second and an average PC power supply can provide 500 watts per second at peak load if that's what it is rated at. Rarely does a power supply reach peak load unless you have one that provides too little electricity to your system. If a power supply does reach peak load and operates at that limit for an extended period of time it can cause damage.
The 50% aging setting is pretty high I wouldn't worry about that too much. As for peak load very rarely does a PC draw as much electricity as it possibly could. Having your processor and video card running at 100%, plus all your hard drives/CD-ROM drives accessing to full potential, and all your add in cards/components being utilized to 100% of their capability just doesn't happen very often even when gaming. For example when was the last time you were playing a demanding game at the highest possible settings while copying large files from across your network, while burning a DVD, playing music, and copying large amounts of data from one hard drive to another?
There is also another factor the PSU calculator doesn't take into consideration and that's amperage. Amperage is the measure of current intensity and a lot of power supplies that claim high wattage at a low price lack the amperage to properly power newer components (higher end video cards for example).
As for the power supplies online having high death rates that's to be expected. A lot of them are of low quality. There is really only a handful of high quality PSU manufacturers and even their products vary in quality, but even their best products aren't going to have a 0% fail rate.
Should you spend the money for extra headroom? I can't tell you that without knowing what's in your system right now, what kind of power supply you have right now, and what kind of power supply your friend is giving you.
The 50% aging setting is pretty high I wouldn't worry about that too much. As for peak load very rarely does a PC draw as much electricity as it possibly could. Having your processor and video card running at 100%, plus all your hard drives/CD-ROM drives accessing to full potential, and all your add in cards/components being utilized to 100% of their capability just doesn't happen very often even when gaming. For example when was the last time you were playing a demanding game at the highest possible settings while copying large files from across your network, while burning a DVD, playing music, and copying large amounts of data from one hard drive to another?
There is also another factor the PSU calculator doesn't take into consideration and that's amperage. Amperage is the measure of current intensity and a lot of power supplies that claim high wattage at a low price lack the amperage to properly power newer components (higher end video cards for example).
As for the power supplies online having high death rates that's to be expected. A lot of them are of low quality. There is really only a handful of high quality PSU manufacturers and even their products vary in quality, but even their best products aren't going to have a 0% fail rate.
Should you spend the money for extra headroom? I can't tell you that without knowing what's in your system right now, what kind of power supply you have right now, and what kind of power supply your friend is giving you.
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- Feb 19, 2009
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amprage is very important agreed , ive seen terrable things with a buddies pc with low amprage 
