how long will an AT supply last?

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Fri Nov 12, 2004 7:03 pm

i've got my old K6-2 400mhz system running as sidekick to my main rig and i just realized that the psu in there has been in use about 7 years (though not 24/7). i don't do anything really critical with this system, but i would hate for a psu failure to kill it entirely as i still use it for certain things and i've even given it a 120GB samsung to chew on.

so anyone know what the life expectancy of older PSUs is? and what is the usual failure mode (i.e. will it fail in such a way that it destroys everything connected to it)?

i just used my kill-a-watt and it shows less than 60W at all times... and i'm surprised its that high (this supply is probably pretty inefficient so that could explain it somewhat). i'm considering getting one of those brick psus from mini-box.com but i'm not sure i can justify sinking more money in this dinosaur.

fraz · Post by **fraz** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 12:30 am

My quiet little dinosaur has a Forton Source AT PSU that came from a 386. I bought it in 1992. Thats 12 years old now! It's running a Pentium I 150Mhz and a 60Gig barracuda for file/print/internet serving/sharing.

Mine has had fairly light use, and until I put in a Panaflo and a Zener had a generic noisy fan to cool it. I have no idea how long it should last.

When friends cheap generic ATX PSUs "blew the magic smoke" they usually left the hard drive intact, killing the MB, Video, and some cards. Some were lucky enough to have nothing damaged. I don't know how representative their experiences were though.

Oklahoma Wolf · Post by **Oklahoma Wolf** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 3:40 pm

I have an Enermax AT unit still going after about 9 years, a generic about 10 years old, and another generic going on 7 years old; so they can last a while. All were in fairly regular use, but not very loaded down. Every once in a while I opened them up to dust them out, and none have really shown me any reason to be too worried. One was so clogged with dust once I was surprised it still worked, but it's still alive and apparently unaffected.

Only had one AT unit die on me, and it was a gradual failure... once in a while it wouldn't power up, and I lived with it until I eventually found myself having to wait several hours to power the thing up

larrymoencurly · Post by **larrymoencurly** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 2:20 am

I think that the prime causes of failure for PSUs under light load are seized fans and bad capacitors, and apparently old AT PSUs had better capacitors that were probably Japanese. I've come across only two bad AT PSUs, one made so cheap that its heatsinks were made of thin steel, another an Enermax with shorted high voltage transistors.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 3:03 am

As long as it's cooled properly it should last a looooong time.

You could also visually check the capacitors as mentioned for bursts or bubbles.

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 6:13 am

thx for the replies... sounds like i don't really have to worry about it.