- Oct 28, 2010
- 8
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- 18,510
After only 7 months of use my Corsair VX-550 Power Supply suddenly died. After a long warranty process the site I bought it from has finally granted me store credit to replace it. Before I choose and install a new PSU I wan't to determine what caused the problem in the first place to try and prevent it from happening again, I was wondering if you guys could help me out.
I suppose most people's first assumption in these cases is a power surge. That seems like a possibility in that there was a power outage shortly before the psu died. When the power came back on the pc wouldn't turn back on but after I unplugged it from the wall and plugged it back in again, it was up and running just fine. Then a day or so later it just switched itself off and refused to turn back on. The lights and fans would somtimes come on for a a split second then stop. The thing is, while I don't have one of those little surge protectors that goes in the wall I'm almost certain that we have a whole house protector installed in the fuse box. After over 6 years of living in this house none of our electronics has ever been damaged after a power outage, so that makes me doubt that a surge killed it.
I had it connected to quite an old extension cable, I've since tested the cable with other devices and it's worked ok but perhaps drawing so much power from crappy power cable damaged the psu in some way?
The only other possibility I can think of is that I might need more power to run my system, giving a power supply more than it can handle can damage it right? However, I checked all my components with various psu calculators before I bought everything and I was never told I'd need anything higher than 450w...could those calculators be inaccurate? My specs are as follows:
PSU: Corsair VX-550 Power Supply
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST31000528AS
ODD: Samsung SH-S223C SATA DVDRW Drive
GPU: Powercolor Radeon HD5770 1GB
'RAM: Mushkin 996768 Silverline PC3-10666 (2x2GB) DDR3
CPU: Intel Core i5 760
MOBO: ASRock H55M-LE Motherboard
It really doesn't seem like too much for a 550w but this is my first build after all so I could be wrong. I really want to do some upgrading (2tb hdd, asus xonar dg sound card, maybe overclock the cpu a little) but now it looks like I didn't even have enough power to run what I already have let alone the extra stuff I intend to add. If this is the case, what psu should I replace it with in order to run my current rig, plus the upgrades i want, would 650w be alright?
Maybe I was just really unlucky? Corsair power supplies are supposed to be really reliable, could I have just gotten a faulty one?
Is there anything else that causes psu failure?
TLDR; Why did my power supply die? How can I prevent it in the future? What should I replace it with?
Thank you so much for your time
I suppose most people's first assumption in these cases is a power surge. That seems like a possibility in that there was a power outage shortly before the psu died. When the power came back on the pc wouldn't turn back on but after I unplugged it from the wall and plugged it back in again, it was up and running just fine. Then a day or so later it just switched itself off and refused to turn back on. The lights and fans would somtimes come on for a a split second then stop. The thing is, while I don't have one of those little surge protectors that goes in the wall I'm almost certain that we have a whole house protector installed in the fuse box. After over 6 years of living in this house none of our electronics has ever been damaged after a power outage, so that makes me doubt that a surge killed it.
I had it connected to quite an old extension cable, I've since tested the cable with other devices and it's worked ok but perhaps drawing so much power from crappy power cable damaged the psu in some way?
The only other possibility I can think of is that I might need more power to run my system, giving a power supply more than it can handle can damage it right? However, I checked all my components with various psu calculators before I bought everything and I was never told I'd need anything higher than 450w...could those calculators be inaccurate? My specs are as follows:
PSU: Corsair VX-550 Power Supply
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST31000528AS
ODD: Samsung SH-S223C SATA DVDRW Drive
GPU: Powercolor Radeon HD5770 1GB
'RAM: Mushkin 996768 Silverline PC3-10666 (2x2GB) DDR3
CPU: Intel Core i5 760
MOBO: ASRock H55M-LE Motherboard
It really doesn't seem like too much for a 550w but this is my first build after all so I could be wrong. I really want to do some upgrading (2tb hdd, asus xonar dg sound card, maybe overclock the cpu a little) but now it looks like I didn't even have enough power to run what I already have let alone the extra stuff I intend to add. If this is the case, what psu should I replace it with in order to run my current rig, plus the upgrades i want, would 650w be alright?
Maybe I was just really unlucky? Corsair power supplies are supposed to be really reliable, could I have just gotten a faulty one?
Is there anything else that causes psu failure?
TLDR; Why did my power supply die? How can I prevent it in the future? What should I replace it with?
Thank you so much for your time
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