how do you know if psu is not powerful enough for system?

[hahher]

how do you know if psu is not powerful enough for system? what happens?

also can things get damaged? suppose you run the system even though it has psu related problems once in a while. will either the computer components or the psu get damaged over time?

 

[Cerb]

How do you know? If you run it on a good load (say, 3Dmark03 + Prime96) and it screws up, or the voltages drop more than about 5% (that's the normal tolerance, IIRC--so 12v shouldn't be below 11.4).

Yes, it can damage the components.

 

[Gurck]

In practice you'll generally just experience system instability, mostly programs crashing and sometimes random reboots, in winXP at least. Anything can happen, but that's what will happen most times.

 

[hahher]

basically stability and voltage fluctuations then?

so if you have system set up, it can run stable under load with steady voltages, then year later (with heavy usage) psu dies taking out some stuff with it, problem was most likely due to psu gone bad and not overloaded system slowly dying?

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: hahher
basically stability and voltage fluctuations then?

so if you have system set up, it can run stable under load with steady voltages, then year later (with heavy usage) psu dies taking out some stuff with it, problem was most likely due to psu gone bad and not overloaded system slowly dying?

Or maybe lightning . It's often hard to track down such problems, why we recommend certain PSUs. Because some PC, owned by someone, somewhere, has a Deer in it.