Unwise to re-use a 6 year old Corsair TX 650W?

PSUs: The source of DC power for all components in the PC & often a big noise source.

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Swedrive
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2009 11:44 am
Location: Sweden

Unwise to re-use a 6 year old Corsair TX 650W?

Post by Swedrive » Tue Sep 03, 2013 10:14 am

Hello,

I'm in the works of a new build and I was looking into re-using my current case and, hopefully, the current PSU.

What do you guys think? The current PSU is a 6 year old Corsair TX 650W.

At the moment, these are the parts I'm looking to put together:

CASE: Antec P182B

MOBO: ASRock Z77 PRO3 ATX

PSU: Corsair TW 650W

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1240V2

GPU: ASUS GeForce GTX 660 2048MB DirectCUII OC

RAM: Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) CL9 1600Mhz HyperX Genesis

+ 128GB SSD och 2TB HDD

My PSU has been running on average 8 hours per day since I bought it.

Would it be unwise to re-use the PSU in the upcoming build? Could it cause harm?

andymcca
Posts: 404
Joined: Mon Jan 11, 2010 8:19 am
Location: Boston, MA, USA

Re: Unwise to re-use a 6 year old Corsair TX 650W?

Post by andymcca » Tue Sep 03, 2013 12:01 pm

In my experience, dust buildup is the greatest risk factor for catastrophic PSU failure. Make sure the unit is nice and clean.

From what I've read about systematic failure, after burn-in failure rates are roughly constant for most hardware. The PSU fan and non-SS capacitors might be exceptions, though. Neither of those would fry your components upon failure AFAIK.

I'm sure others will have more to say.

CA_Steve
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Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Unwise to re-use a 6 year old Corsair TX 650W?

Post by CA_Steve » Tue Sep 03, 2013 3:10 pm

Short answer: If it's an economic decision, sure.

Longer answer: Given a benign environment, it's probably good for another 6 years. +1 on the non-solid state caps being the component(s) that will go first. Your proposed system won't see more than ~200-220W while gaming and 260W under stress load. So, the fan won't ramp. If the idle fan annoys you, it might be a good time to put a lower rpm model in there. The only downside is the lower efficiency vs some current models at idle and your load.

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