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What can happen if a PC loses power regularly???

Tags:
  • Power Supplies
  • Intel i7
  • Power
  • CPUs
  • Windows 7
  • Graphics Cards
Last response: in Windows 7
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July 26, 2014 11:45:28 PM

Hi everybody, I have probably a bit of a noob question about PC's losing power.

I moved to a different country about a year ago and I now live in a very small remote rural village, that unfortunately seems to have really bad infrastructure. We get power cuts ranging from 3 seconds to 10 hours as much as 4 or 5 times a week! I know, crazy right!
As a result my PC regularly loses power and of course switches off without being shut down properly.

So my question is, what is likely to happen if I don't get a UPS???
Is it a case of if I'm in the middle of typing something I'll lose it, or is likely that eventually Windows will go crazy and just implode???

Thank you for any help.
Regards

More about : happen loses power regularly

a c 154 ) Power supply
a c 252 à CPUs
a b $ Windows 7
a c 249 U Graphics card
July 27, 2014 12:00:15 AM

Corruption of HD / SSD from the shutdown

Damage can result from spikes which precede / come after a shutdown
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July 27, 2014 12:02:37 AM

If a pc losses power regularly ,the hard disk or the ssd may crash and all your memory would be going to be gone...You need to get a ups so that you can shut down.Otherwise all your files will be gone.,So just get a ups instead of getting a new hdd.Pick as the best solution if it helped you
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a c 144 ) Power supply
a c 129 à CPUs
a b $ Windows 7
a b U Graphics card
July 27, 2014 12:06:39 AM

Most of the time Windows will simply inform you that windows was improperly shut down and selecting "start normally" will bring all back happily. There is the slight probability that the OS may become corrupted but that should easily be restored. The most likely bad scenario is that a driver becomes corrupted which may cause havoc to the machine - again, a restore of the driver(s) involved would be the fix.
Overall there really isn't much terrible that should happen from power loss but the real problem can arise from surges or spikes, if the power grid is that bad, I'd expect some overcurrent events now and again - to take care of those a surge protector with an MOV (metal oxide varistor) should be used at a minimum - some PSU's feature MOV's also. If you have a PSU which is equipped with an MOV, you should be okay for overcurrent events
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July 29, 2014 2:24:54 AM

Thank you for your help, I check my PSU and it does have metal oxide varistor. I'm going to look into a UPS but they are pretty expensive, I worked out from using half a dozen PSU calculators that I need one that's capable of 650-700w, so for that wattage they seem to be around £300-£350, which as we are still having a lot of work done to the house is a bit much right now, but hopefully I can pick one up soon.

Thanks again, appreciate it.
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