Psu Degradation

[robAP]

i'm reading how the caps and internals of a PSU degrades over time in performance, but there is no mention of how much over what time. So does anyone know this answer? how much degradation will I see over what period of time for my older PSU's? how much comes from age and how much comes from use? I ask this as I'm looking at My 3 year old enermax 535 watt psu. and i'm wondering just how much power it's capable of now that its been used regularly at 50% to 75% or more perhaps. but due to its age and use, is it possible that it might not be able to pull its advertised weight? also, i know its not efficient. i got it even before i heard of this "80-plus" stuff so im wondering if it's typical 70% eff. is now quite a bit less.

 

anyone?

[SMeeD]

If its only 3 years old I wouldnt expect any problems. If it were a cheapo PSU withe cheapo caps then maybe.

[Crow47]

Have you had any problems? If not I wouldn't worry about it. Sadly I don't have any figures for you in terms of degredation.

[paulktreg]

Power supplies do degrade over time and the available wattage decreases and/or the DC rail quality gets poorer. The question as to by how much over how long is very difficult to quantify. Component quality, ambient temperatures, how much power has it supplied in the past and over how long, etc., all come into play. One of the main culprits when a PSU fails are the electrolytic capacitors. Generally speaking good quality Japanese brands are better with 105 deg C rather than 85 deg C rating.

 

I have only had one power supply actually fail on me and that was a generic low budget model and it was my fault really for using it. The Enermax should be good for a few years yet and you will probably find it will still deliver somewhere near its maximum power, it's the low budget generic ones that should cause concern.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers

 

Paul

[Hyper Threaded]

Enermax seems to build their PSUs pretty well, one of the few companies to still build them in-house. You can probably get a good year or two out of it still.

[robAP]

thanks fro the replys guys. official model no: EG565AX-VE(W) (24P), an active PFC atx-2.0 unit. I picked it to power a system that would use 80% of the max. I was just worried about it's max creeping down lower and lower to what the system would need at 100%. In thinking about it that would mean it would have to loose about 100 watts over time. So in looking at the responses, I should be fine for a good long time. It's the inefficiency I'm wondering about too mostly out of curiosity. searching i found a german old review that stated 78%. pretty nice really all considered, so this shouldnt be too bad to hang on to for a while longer.

 

thanks.

Edited December 14, 2008 by robAP