PC won't turn on at all - need advice on determining cause (guess failed PSU)

Hello Aeacus,

thank you, that's what I needed to know.

I've already looked at some replacements, anticipating the need, and I can either get the current successor to the M12II (M12II Evo 620 W) for about 70 EUR, or I can invest about 120 EUR and get the Seasonic Prime SSR-650GD. Aside from slightly more power output, the more expensive model has higher efficiency (gold vs. bronze for the Evo 620) and, possibly more importantly to my current thinking, it comes with a 12-year warranty according to this, whereas the Evo still has the same 5-year warranty the older model had.

I wasn't expecting to buy computer components just now, and although I can afford either one, I'm not thrilled about the expense. Still, so long as I need to buy something anyway, I would probably prefer to go for the more expensive Prime, based on this reasoning:

1) The higher efficiency should get me some savings on power costs. The calculator here says about 15 EUR / year, although I think that assumes a higher average load than I actually reach. With my own assumptions, I get about half that, but even so, that's about 5-6 years to pay back the price difference from power savings alone, assuming a similar use profile that the computer's mostly had recently.

2) The warranty on the Prime is really long. I'm guessing failures like the one I've had are covered, so unless I manage to wreck it myself somehow, I could count on the Prime to run for those 12 years. The Evo, on the other hand, I can only count on for the 5 years covered by warranty, as its predecessor has just demonstrated. I realize it can run a lot longer than that, but there's no guarantee of that. So, if the Prime can reliably last 2.4 times longer, I think I can take the extra expense.

I would like to ask, however, particularly if I buy the long-lasting Prime, whether you think that the 650 W output will be enough once I need to do a major rebuild on the computer? It's 5 years old now, and I'm expecting I'll be lucky if it lasts as it is for another 5. If I get the cheaper Evo, I won't be too put out if it turns out I need to replace it in 5 years. It's true that the Prime should have paid back most of its extra price in power savings by that time, but it'd still be a shame to have to replace a PSU that, at that point, would have another 7 years on it at least. I've looked, and the Prime is also available in a 750 W version for about another 20 EUR.

I don't need the 750 W model for the current PC; in fact, the calculator I linked earlier estimates I actually need about 530 W and recommends I get at least 580 W... which means even a 650 W PSU still has some overhead, if not very much. I realize none of us can know with any certainty how much power PC parts will need in another 5 years, but still. I'd almost certainly be building a machine at the same price-performance level as the current one had when it was new. I don't normally overclock, and I certainly wouldn't buy multiple GPUs, thousand-dollar CPUs, or anything of the sort. Given that, I think that the only part that worries me is the GPU. Do you think a GPU in the 300-400 EUR class 5 years from now is likely to need more than a 650 W PSU, given a "reasonable" setup on the other components? If you were in my place, would you invest the 20 EUR into the 750 W PSU as "insurance" against that eventuality?

Note: If you'd like to take a look at the market yourself, I live in the Czech Republic. The only major local retailer I've found that even has an English version for its website is this one. Even so, the English translations aren't very good. Sorry about that. It's the local market leader, meaning its selection is pretty much representative of what one can get here, although its prices tend to be a bit high. I'm pretty sure they also don't have an option to display prices in anything but Czech koruna; currently, 1 EUR = 25.50 CZK; 1 USD = 21.00 CZK, approximately.

Hello Aeacus,

thank you once again for the detailed advice and for the additional resources you linked to.

I think I'll go with the Prime Gold 650. Both the Titanium and the Focus you linked to are available here as well, but the Titanium is about 40 EUR more expensive than the Gold, and from what you said and what I've read, I'm fairly sure the quality of the Gold is already excellent and quite enough for my needs.

I made an estimate of the power savings from the Gold vs. the Evo, and it turns out that the Gold actually comes out significantly cheaper per year of expected operation than the Evo, even with assumptions that are fairly generous to the latter. For the Titanium, however, the extra savings from the improved efficiency are not enough to offset the higher purchase price, even over the long expected lifetime; furthermore, that lifetime is unlikely to be significantly longer than on the Gold, as, like you noted, they are quite similar units aside from the efficiency. I guess the electrical stability properties are better on the Titanium, but from the reviews I've looked at, even on the Gold they're top-notch already.

As for the Focus, it's somewhat cheaper than the Prime Gold (about 25 EUR, I think) and has the same efficiency class, and a 10-year warranty is great, but the Prime still has 20% extra warranty time, and I'm guessing the electrical properties will be a bit better on the Prime as well, seeing as it is the "flagship" series. So, I'm calling the difference in performance for money between the Focus and the Prime Gold "too small to matter", and will probably go with the Prime. Like you said, the Focus might be great for someone who's building a compact system or just has a tight case; however, my case has plenty of room in the PSU bay and I don't see myself building into a smaller form factor in the future, either. (I kinda like big rigs - at least you feel like you got something for all that money. )

If you're interested to see my math for the savings, here goes (it's pretty long and certainly not mandatory reading ):

============================================================================

Evo - expected life 10 years (warranty is 5 years, so this is fairly generous IMO), efficiency 84.5% (based on test values from a review)
Prime Gold - expected life 15 years (warranty is 12), efficiency 91% (again from test)

Computer use
Idle: 20 hours / day x 350 days / year = 7,000 h / year @ 40 W
Load: 500 hours / year @ 400 W

This is a simplified guess based on the fact that I tend to leave the PC running 24/7, but most of the time it's doing nothing at all. The load time is based on how much time I approximately spend gaming per year. I ignored "semi-idle" time such as watching movies etc. I wasn't able to get any definite numbers on idle consumption for a desktop; the reported range is huge (from about 20 W to about 150 W, although anything over 100 W are probably poor-economy machines like three-GPU OC jobs etc.), so I just used what I think is a fairly conservative guess. Anandtech reports that systems with the R9 290 draw about 75 W idle though, so I can use that as a "high" alternate estimate (their test rig seems to have fairly high-end components, though).

Electricity price: about EUR 0.16 / kWh
(from your sig I'm guessing you're in France, which seems to have similar prices... whereas our mutual neighbors the Germans apparently pay about twice that... I guess that's what they get for their strict "sortir du nucléaire" approach )

I consider the power draw given above to be behind the PSU, rather than at the wall; I realize that's not the most rigorous approach, but it simplifies the calculation a bit.

With these assumptions, the PC takes 480 kWh per year "behind the PSU", which with the Evo comes out to about 568 kWh at the wall; with the Prime Gold, about 527 kwh at the wall. That's a difference of about 40.5 kWh, or about EUR 6.50 / year on electricity alone.

The Evo costs about EUR 70 here, the Prime Gold about EUR 120, for a difference of EUR 50. From power savings alone with the above assumptions, the Prime would pay for itself relative to the Evo in about 7.5 years... well below its guaranteed endurance and about halfway through the expected life I assumed, and even within the Evo's expected (though not guaranteed) endurance.

However, if we also include the investment costs of buying a replacement PSU (where I assume you'd keep buying successors to these PSUs at the same price and with the same expected life at the end of the old ones' expected life), then the Evo's EUR 70 price gets assigned across 10 years for an annual cost of EUR 7, plus power consumed, while the Prime's EUR 120 get assigned across 15 years for EUR 8, plus the Evo's power consumed, less the annual power savings from the Prime's higher efficiency. Thus, the Evo costs about EUR 91 + 7 per year = EUR 98 (power + investment), while the Prime costs about EUR 84.5 + 8 = EUR 92.5 per year. I.e., the total savings from the Prime's higher efficiency and longer expected life relative to the Evo amount to about EUR 5.50 per year (or about EUR 55 over the Evo's expected life, or about EUR 82.50 over the Prime's expected life). That seems like a very solid economic argument to buy the Prime, provided my assumptions are realistic.

For the Focus, I'd assume an expected life of 12.5 years (against warranty of 10), and its price here is about EUR 95. Efficiency is about 89.5% in test. (Note: this test is specifically stated to be done on American 120 V AC mains; the other tests I found don't say, but chances are good they were done in the US too - I'm not sure whether there's a systematic difference in PSU efficiency on US 120 V mains vs. European 230 V mains...?)

Prime Titanium: Expected life 15 years, efficiency 93% (from test), price about EUR 160.

For the Focus, the metric above comes out to about EUR 85 + 7.6 = EUR 92.6, nearly exactly the same as the Prime Gold.
For the Titanium, it is EUR 82.5 + 10.7 = EUR 93.2, which, I grant you, is a marginal difference, but there's still the rather high immediate investment that I'd have to front now.

On the other hand, if I modify my original assumption about the idle power draw to Anandtech's 75 W, the numbers become:

Evo EUR 137.3 + 7 = EUR 144.30
Focus EUR 128 + 7.6 = EUR 135.60
Prime G EUR 127.5 + 8 = EUR 135.50
Prime T EUR 124.7 + 10.7 = EUR 135.40

In this case, the Titanium is comparable to the Gold and the Focus, so there's probably no reason not to get the Titanium's for its other pluses if you can support the initial outlay. In fact, however I slice it, it's pretty clear that the only one of these one shouldn't get, money-wise, is the "cheap" Evo, with which you're liable to end up overpaying quite noticeably unless your particular unit lasts massively beyond its expected life (recall that I already gave the Evo quite a long bonus over its warranty, longer than for the others, relatively speaking) and your computer use is fairly light. In countries with more expensive electricity (like those poor, green Germans... green with envy, that is ... sorry Germans, I don't mean it seriously, hope you won't be insulted), the difference will be even bigger.

Yeah, so that's about my two cents (or 100 euros, as the case may be ). I realize that the "precise" numbers I came up with are based on very general assumptions and can't be taken literally, but granting that, do you think the analysis as a whole is reasonably realistic?

Hi,

just some more ranting out of me, read it if you have nothing better to do

I agree with pretty much all you're saying about the initial price vs. efficiency tradeoff. The estimates I did show that the higher-end units more or less offset initial price with efficiency savings, though of course how soon that happens depends on how much one's paying for power, which can vary widely. So, it's probably ultimately up to each of us to decide where on the initial-price-vs-later-savings curve we want to come in.

(This is actually the first time I bothered to do a detailed analysis like this; back when I was buying the ex-current PSU, I did pay attention to adequate wattage, quality, and reliability, but not so much to the energy economy (wasn't me paying for the power yet back then... ). I also didn't really pay attention to the warranty periods; or rather, I figured 5 years is generous enough and didn't really assign much weight to warranties much longer than that.)

I gotta say, I am a bit tempted to buy the Titanium, since ultimately most or all of the price difference will most likely pay for itself. On the other hand, I'll probably still go with the Gold, since there aren't really any major downsides to it and, like I said, I wasn't expecting to be shopping for components now and would like to keep the costs under control.

Oh, and sorry about my mis-estimate of your place of residence; it shows that I shouldn't go assuming these things automatically like that. That said, if you're paying EUR 0.03 to 0.05 per kWh, I really kinda envy you that. I happen to be living in the countryside right now, meaning I have to heat the house; and while I have a wood-burning stove for that, sometimes I find it convenient to use an electric room heater as a supplementary heat source... Except even such "part-time" heating guzzles power like you wouldn't believe and my electricity expenses are considerable. (Fan-and-spiral electric heaters are just about the most un-economical heating solution there is... Well, maybe second to buying a quad-SLI, top-of-the-line Core i7 computer, linking it to SETI@home or somesuch, and heating with that. EDIT: Forget SETI, I could run a coin mine! I need to get with the times... )

My heating expenses aside, if your electricity costs are that low, I can certainly see that power savings on a PSU wouldn't be a key issue for you. In fact, I'm pretty sure the calculations I did for my prices would show that electricity savings wouldn't pay for more efficient PSUs with your prices. (By the same token, I would expect people in countries with really expensive electricity, like the aforementioned Germans, to not even touch PSUs below Gold, and buy relatively more Platinums and Titaniums than is common elsewhere. I wonder if that's actually true... Well, knowing how conscientious Germans are about the environment, I would guess high-efficiency PSUs are popular there, since they're also "greener". Also, with their average income, the prices aren't such a burden, at least for the "average person".)

About cases - well, yours seem to be somewhat bigger than mine is; the Anidees AI6 I have is nominally classed as a mid-tower. Still, it's a pretty large mid-tower, brushing the borderline of full-tower territory. It'd probably be cramped with e.g. a multi-GPU setup, but with the fairly simple build I've got, I have no shortage of space. (Although IIRC it can't fit boards bigger than ATX.) It also has a lot of drive bays and fan mounts (also can mount smaller water cooling sets, although again, that might be a bit cramped), most of which I don't even need. I bought it with intentional headroom if I ever decided to expand or OC the computer, add more storage capacity, and / or replace parts with newer and bigger ones.

Thanks to a removable HDD tray (reduces drive bays from 8 to 5... acceptable I think), it can mount GPUs up to 430 mm long, which I think is long enough. I wouldn't shell out the ridiculous money for the absolute highest, biggest models anyway, and most of the more normally-priced cards don't come anywhere near that. (And I'm not sure if the top-line items do, either...) With the drive tray in, it can still take 280 mm, which is just barely not enough for the Asus R9 290 I currently have, but I guess that proves the worth of the removable tray. As I currently have 2 regular HDDs plus one SSD (for which there is a single reduced-size slot in the case), I still have 3 bays free to use without it becoming an issue, which I'm unlikely to exceed unless media file sizes change significantly.

Especially given that currently, price per GB on magneto-optical HDDs doesn't start increasing significantly until past the 10 TB mark. I mean, what in the world would I do with another 30 TB of storage?! (This is apparently a fairly recent development - it surprised me a bit when I looked it up just now to look knowledgeable here. Last time I'd looked, the break point was around 5 TB... I guess SSDs have become so dominant for performance uses that regular HDDs are mostly relegated to "consumption goods" - i.e., people are willing to pay mostly only for capacity, low value added otherwise.)

Well, anyway, the only minor issue the case has is that there is less room than would be ideal behind the MTB plate for cable routing, especially with the insulation lining on the side panels taking off another 2-3 mm. Then again, many cases, even full-up towers, have that particular issue. (Or at least many did back when I was shopping for this computer. It'd be nice to know that the manufacturers listened to the builders and increased that space, given how common a complaint it used to be, but I haven't checked recently.)

Aside from that, I've never had any overheating problems (then again, I don't OC and my parts are mostly reasonable upper-mainstream models, not the kind that usually strain the cases' cooling capacity), despite only using the fans supplied with the case (one exhaust and one intake, IIRC; it's been a while, would have to open it up to be sure ), which is about 3 fewer than the case can mount. The ones I have are the manufacturer-supplied models, too, no fancy super-quiet aftermarket models. Plus there's one more 120 mm fan on the CPU cooler. (The cooler is aftermarket - whose isn't, the boxed coolers supplied with CPUs might as well not be supplied at all. I've got a decent mid-upper range heatpipe tower model, can't recall what exactly off the top of my head, cost about EUR 40-50 though.)

I bought the case for a balance of cooling and noise (plus I like the clean, minimalist design, and I'm not much one for side windows, although this model did also sell in a window variant), and the noise is, I think, very good as well; I can hear it at load, but it isn't loud to the point of standing out in a normal environment. In fact, the biggest noise issue used to be the original GPU (the one that crapped out right after the 2-year warranty ran out, I think I mentioned that in one of the earlier posts). It was a Sapphire Radeon 7850, one of those "premium cooler" models, too. With three big-ass fans squeezed onto the radiator, you'd think they'd be able to keep the rpm's low and the noise down.

But either the cooler was poorly designed, or the fan stepping poorly configured, because once the card had been loaded out for a while (not very long, 10-15 mins), the fans went to about 2,500 rpm, maybe more, and made a whine like a possessed vacuum cleaner. (Well, ok, not quite that loud, but loud enough to be distracting during gaming; clearly audible even over whatever sounds the game made, assuming a reasonable volume setting on the speakers.) Fortunately, the Asus I got as a replacement doesn't have this issue (despite having only two fans); its noise level at load is, while not really inaudible, hard to notice unless you specifically listen for it. And it runs a few degrees cooler, too. (And came with a 3-year warranty, which was one of the reasons I went with that particular brand... that, and its reputation for reliability.)

Well, that's a sort of "tour" of my PC (or about half the components, anyway). If you want to chat some more, feel free to write back.
Regards, Michael