Enough juice?

[jhansman]

So after a nearly complete overhaul, the only legacy parts from my old Phenom II system are the two Samsung 850 2.5" SSDs in my sig and an Antec BP 550 Plus PSU. The latter is now about 5 yrs old and has had daily use, but I've not needed the 12v rail it has for a graphics card, which the RX 570 I am getting soon will require. You all reckon I'm OK for power, or would the components listed (plus an optical drive rarely, if ever, used) need more that this PSU can deliver in heat of moderate gaming? So far, not a hiccup from it, but I don't know that much about system power demands these days. Since this is likely my last build (yes, I'm a geezer), I'm OK with replacing the PSU if it would better serve the rest of the system. Thanks for any info you all can provide.

 

[UsandThem]

550w is enough (provided the PSU is still in good condition, and can deliver what it's rated for). You can peek inside to see if any of the capacitors are leaking or bulging (they usually are the first thing to go). If everything looks good, and it's still providing solid voltages, then there's nothing wrong with continuing to use it.

That said, that PSU is pretty basic (and came with a 3 year warranty). If it was me, I'd pick up a new gold rated or higher PSU.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's probably OK, but yeah, @UsandThem gave the best advice, give it a look-see, try it out, maybe run some OCCTSU test, or Furmark along with Prime95, for maximum CPU+GPU loading, and see if you get any freezes, reboots, power-offs, or artifacting.

Granted, if the PSU IS marginal, a test like that MAY push it "over the edge" into failure mode. But an Antec-brand PSU should have all of the appropriate protections in place, so it should "fail gently", and not harm anything. (Hopefully - those "protection feature" components age and fail as well, which is why I like to replace my PSU pro-actively, when they get "too old", or when I perform a major build upgrade. Thankfully, those components are largely solid-state, and the first thing to go in a PSU is generally just the caps, so the protection should be intact, unless the PSU was subjected to excessive heat. Any failure mode, and it should be either re-capped or replaced, most likely.)

 

[jhansman]

Yeah, I hear ya. I will run some stress tests and see if anything buckles . I have another issue that I will use a separate post for in hopes that one of you far more experienced folks can help me sort out. Thanks for the PSU thoughts.