Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question
Solved

What happens if there is too much wattage on a PSU?

Tags:
  • Power Supplies
  • Corsair
Last response: in Components
Share
July 20, 2014 12:43:32 AM

I have a Corsair 500 Watt PSU and I am upgrading my graphics card and I have found out that my PSU will be 35 watts over. With the graphics card my wattage would be 535 watts or so. I was wondering if this will be possible/ or will it damage any parts?

More about : wattage psu

a b ) Power supply
July 20, 2014 12:56:56 AM

take a look at the cpu and the max voltage of the gpu when under load. this is the 12v load. look on your power supply for the 12v rating it may be in voltage or amps. if it amps take the amps and times(*) it by 12 for the voltage. if you run a power supply in a game and it hits it max rated output on the 12v line a few things can happen. if it a good brand of power supply it run hot and loud but it it run. some units may ripple out and your pc may lock up or shut off. the bad unit wont shut off you hear a loud pop as one of the caps or parts short out or fail.
m
0
l
July 20, 2014 12:58:40 AM

smorizio said:
take a look at the cpu and the max voltage of the gpu when under load. this is the 12v load. look on your power supply for the 12v rating it may be in voltage or amps. if it amps take the amps and times(*) it by 12 for the voltage. if you run a power supply in a game and it hits it max rated output on the 12v line a few things can happen. if it a good brand of power supply it run hot and loud but it it run. some units may ripple out and your pc may lock up or shut off. the bad unit wont shut off you hear a loud pop as one of the caps or parts short out or fail.


Would it damage any parts?
m
0
l
Related resources
a b ) Power supply
July 20, 2014 1:06:05 AM

Oh dear. If you run near full load, you may damage the PSU. It may stop working.

There is a video, someone will hopefully come by to post it, since I can't find it right now.

It's not good to watch. :( 
m
0
l

Best solution

July 20, 2014 1:06:19 AM

I can speak from experience that using a PSU to weak or a poor quality or both can harm components. I had an Athlon II 240 with 4GB RAM and an HD 6450 on a 260w PSU. The HD 6450 went from black to green in 2 months from the heat. Playing Borderlands at 1024x768 on medium settings the GPU was 90°C+ when in game. I was having issues with the CPU reads for temps but it had a fairly sized Passive heatsink that got quite hot as well. Then the PSU crapped out and did do damage.
Share
!