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Does a higher price power supply protect the load better?

N

NeoPTLD

Platinum Member
My computer had suffered a catastrophic failure two weeks ago and I am finally back online. I was testing an UPS when it happened. I had my monitor and computer connected to UPS and when I unplugged the power to UPS, instead of staying on without a transition, the computer rebooted. Shortly, I heard a pop from the computer and it shut off. I took the cover off to examine the situation and there was some smoke coming out of power supply.


I knew right there the 250W generic ATX power supply that came with my case was a toast. I bought an Allied 250W ATX power supply to replace it. When I plugged in the new power supply, it would cycle on and off rapidly so I knew it was more than power supply that was damaged. My hypothesis is UPS did something to damage the power supply and power supply destroyed the motherboard when it failed.

In the end, I had to replace the motherboard and the power supply. Does anyone know for sure if higher end power supplies have some mean of protecting the load against abnormal voltage should it fail?


 
A "higher end" power supply such as an Antec True Powersupply may not "protect" from power problems, but it sure as hell is of much better quality than some generic piece of crap that came with your case.

The better quality PSU you get, the less likely something bad will happen because of it.
This tends to be the case with most things. More money = better quality.

Dan 🙂
 
In Mechwarrior II (edit: and MW3, doh!) there was a technology called CASE (cellular ammunition storage something) that could be added to the 'mech, section by section. If the armor was gone and the ammo took a hit (or overheated and detonated), CASE would buffer the explosion (the alternative being to select the weapon type and manually jettison the ammo... been there, done that 🙂).

It sounds like you're asking whether top-end power supplies have some sort of feature along those lines, where they'll disconnect when they're about to self-destruct under excessive load. I honestly don't know, but I would suggest not overloading in the first place 😀 Quality first, then output & regulation. Overprovisioning doesn't hurt anything but your wallet, either. I mean, your car can probably cruise at 60mph on under 20 horsepower... gonna buy a car with a 20hp engine? Didn't think so 😉
 
Any decent unit will shut off if overloaded. Presumably this should protect other components as well.
 
> I bought an Allied 250W ATX power supply to replace it.

AFAIK Allied is the new name of the old Deer branded power supplies, which from my experience were the absolute WORST because I have seen a large quantity of them blow up... often kamikazee (sp) style, taking other components with them
 
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