Age when its time to question your power supply?

[Evil-I]

Hi All,

Soon about to do a big upgrade from my heavily overclocked (on water) i7 3930k and dual GTX970's Also heavily overclocked) to Ryzen 9 5950x and whatever new era graphics card wins out as far as performance, price and availability is concerned.

My PSU is a Superflower leadex platinum 1000Watt and is probably nearly 7 years old? It's been spot on the entire time I've had it, running a 3930k at up to 4.8Ghz (I won the silicon lottery hence why I've kept it running so long) and at one point 3 x gtx 970's all with modded bios and heavy overclocks.

I haven't had any reason to doubt it, but also wouldn't like it to go pop and take out expensive new components...

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

E-I

 

[mattyfez]

It's one of those 'it depends' questions.

High end PSUs are designed to die gracefully so in theory you can use it until it becomes unstable. Thats's the main point of a high end PSU if you ask me, before other 'nice to haves' such as efficiency, high operarating temp, low ripple, sustained max load etc. Although those features generally come hand in hand with good safety features.

I only replaced my last PSU of simmilar vintage because the fan was getting a bit noisy and there was a fair bit of dust inside it, and I botched fitting a DIY replacement fan, so cut my losses and bought a new one.

 

[Grimley]

Rule of thumb for me is if aint broke don't fix it, it 'SHOULD' power a 5950x/RTX3900/AMD Big navi equivalent without too much trouble. But & a BIG 'but' has said PSU powered your current rig at full load all those years? if its led a hard life then it may be time to sell it on & buy new for the sake of a good Warranty.

 

[Evil-I]

Thanks guys, helpful.

To be honest even with the load I've had on it I don't think I've ever particularly stressed it, I'm guessing it never went much above 800Watt even with all the overclocks, the fan rarely even kicked in and I'm massively impressed with the quality of the engineering from SuperFlower. I'm not sure many other PSUs would have got a stock 3.2ghz i7 processor to 100% stable at 4.8ghz (well 4.7Ghz 24/7) for over 7 years...

So I'm leaning towards the wait and see as per mattyfez's suggestion, and if anything starts looking a little dodgy or unstable then I'll change it out quick.

Funnily enough a VERY old psu I bought over 20 years ago (Tagan 480 watt I think) only just died in a hand me down bits build I did for my mum a few years ago. Solid workhorse and didn't damage anything else when it finally gave up.

Certainly got my moneys worth from that!

Thanks again guys!

E-I

P.S. just did some online PSU calculation and even when it was running 3 x GTX970 and the 4.8Ghz overclock it was probably pushing just over 900Watt, the bulk of its life its just run the 2 x GTX970 and 4.7ghz CPU which according to the calculator is probably nearer the 750-800 Watt mark.

 

[Darujhistan]

No need to worry in your case Evil I, I would say. Good quality PSU, it's not been stressed and it's not that old. I had a 12 year old Corsair 850W still running fine in my old system, I only upgraded when I built a new system as it was that old it wasn't even modular and it wasn't silent like my Seasonic Prime is.

 

[Kelt]

Hi All,

Soon about to do a big upgrade from my heavily overclocked (on water) i7 3930k and dual GTX970's Also heavily overclocked) to Ryzen 9 5950x and whatever new era graphics card wins out as far as performance, price and availability is concerned.

My PSU is a Superflower leadex platinum 1000Watt and is probably nearly 7 years old? It's been spot on the entire time I've had it, running a 3930k at up to 4.8Ghz (I won the silicon lottery hence why I've kept it running so long) and at one point 3 x gtx 970's all with modded bios and heavy overclocks.

I haven't had any reason to doubt it, but also wouldn't like it to go pop and take out expensive new components...

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

E-I

My PSU is coming up to thirteen years old, works great.

Absolutely no reason to replace your unit.

 

[JasonM]

It depends on 2 things.

1) The original quality of the PSU
2) How near it's rated limit it typically ran.

I have a Seasonic X650 from 2009 still in use in a system, at the time those Seasonic X series were the best consumer PSU's made. That PSU had an easy life only peaking around 200w usage. I expect that Seasonic X650 could go 20+ years running like this.

 

[Grimley]

/\/\/\ I'm going to put a spanner in your works

I owned a X560 for a couple of years. I ran a Core2D E7400 with onboard then a 2500K at stock with a HD7850, so it wasnt exactly stressed & it still went pop. I still like seasonic even though I no longer have one running my rigs.

 

[Grimley]

/\/\/\ I'm going to put a spanner in your works

I owned a X560 for a couple of years. I ran a Core2D E7400 with onboard then a 2500K at stock with a HD7850, so it wasnt exactly stressed & it still went pop. I still like seasonic even though I no longer have one running my rigs.

 

[Joxeon]

I would replace it something new considering you are going with expensive new hardware.

You can probably sell the superflower and recoup almost 100 quid so that will offset the cost of a new one.

 

[Rom]

Im still running a 12 year old HX1000.

Recently got a 3080 FTW Ultra, powers that no problem, even with it pulling 450w.

That said, I have got a new one for my next build. Apparently the internals degrade over time etc. So whilst I dont think mines about to die or anything, Ive more than had my moneys worth, think its been in 3 full rebuilds.

 

[Sampsy]

Well my corsair HX 850W which I bought in June 2011 just went pop when I switched it on at the wall this morning. So... that long?

It's really annoying actually as I'm planning to move to a SFF case soon but the corsair SF 750 is out of stock everywhere so now I'm stuck unless I buy a PSU only to dump it in a few weeks.

 

[eagleuk]

I had an 850w Tough power PSU that I used for around a decade.

Only really swapped it out because it sold with the rest of my old PC.

In my opinion, there's isn't much point in changing unless there is a specific reason.

 

[Hakanese]

They're a great brand of PSU, and as long as it works I wouldn't replace unless you have to, EVGA rebrand Superflower psus. I went back to mine after a psu I had from seasonic died on me after 2 years

 

[james.miller]

They're a great brand of PSU, and as long as it works I wouldn't replace unless you have to, EVGA rebrand Superflower psus. I went back to mine after a psu I had from seasonic died on me after 2 years

Funny, i want back to a corsair built by seasonic after my superflower want bang

 

[turbot1984]

A lot of considered advice so not much to add. My 5 year old Antec HCP platinum 1000W hadn't broken sweat with previous i7 6700k/gtx 1070, but new build i9 10850k/3080 both OC will be a different matter, maybe 200W more load? Still think it will be fine given what an unstressed life its had so far.

 

[pp111]

I usually replace them when the warranty runs out.