How long do quality power supplies typically last?

Smartazz

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How long do you think a good quality seasonic would last? Several years of continuous usage? SHare your experiances. Thanks.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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I had my dual Seasonics that lasted around 2 years I'm guess. I had a Seasonic S12 600 watt and 500 watt powering my system, and they never had issues. I even powered my system with just the 600w for a day or two, and it only hiccupped a little bit, which was very surprising...
 

Smartazz

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Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I had my dual Seasonics that lasted around 2 years I'm guess. I had a Seasonic S12 600 watt and 500 watt powering my system, and they never had issues. I even powered my system with just the 600w for a day or two, and it only hiccupped a little bit, which was very surprising...

lol, what did you have in that system that a single 600 watt seasonic couldn't handle?
 

Atheus

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Dual 600W Seasonic? For redundancy or actually both of them running at once? What was it a quad Opteron?

OP: About 5 minutes longer than the warranty in my experience, although I've never had a Fortron fail and I must have had some of them for over 2 years.
 

Smartazz

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Originally posted by: Atheus
Dual 600W Seasonic? For redundancy or actually both of them running at once? What was it a quad Opteron?

OP: About 5 minutes longer than the warranty in my experience, although I've never had a Fortron fail and I must have had some of them for over 2 years.

From the sounds of it, he used both power supplies at the same time. Maybe he has a lot of hard drives, video cards and a quad opteron. That probobly costs a lot of money to run then.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Smartazz
Originally posted by: Atheus
Dual 600W Seasonic? For redundancy or actually both of them running at once? What was it a quad Opteron?

OP: About 5 minutes longer than the warranty in my experience, although I've never had a Fortron fail and I must have had some of them for over 2 years.

From the sounds of it, he used both power supplies at the same time. Maybe he has a lot of hard drives, video cards and a quad opteron. That probobly costs a lot of money to run then.

I had a dual Xeon 2.66GHz, with about (on average) 12 hard drives. My case was a 26-bay Enermax case, that held 8x92mm fans, 2x120mm fans, and that was just case cooling. Then there were the two SATA enclosures... And then there was the about 5 lights in it as well. It was a beast. It has now been parted out, and I'm keeping the rest for later, and I'm rebuilding. The case is going into storage though, until a time which I can use it again....

The computer (Fullmetal Chocobo was the machine's name) specs

And here are some pics

EDIT: And yes, they were used at the same time. The 600w powered the mobo, video card aux, and critical fans (both CPU fans on the heat sinks), while the 500w PSU powered all of the case fans, hard drives, and other misc equipment.
 

Smartazz

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lol, 12 hdds on average. I guess that it was for professional work. How long are the warranties on seasonics anyway?
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Smartazz
lol, 12 hdds on average. I guess that it was for professional work. How long are the warranties on seasonics anyway?

Also, I should note that this machine ran at 100% 24/7. It liked it's crunchables, so it was always running some kind of DC (Distributed Computer) program.

EDIT: And the Season S12 series have 3 year warranties.
 

GalvanizedYankee

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High temps kill capacitors and caps falling out of spec will kill a PSU.

JEDEC wants desktop PSUs(hardware) to last 5 years and server/workstation PSUs(hardware) to last 10 years.

There are Delta and Zippy SMPSs that have lasted well over 15 years in servers running 24/7 in airconditioned rooms.


...Galvanized
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
that's ridiculous

What is? That high temps kill caps, and degrade a PSU? Or that the warranty for Seasonic S12's is 3 years?

If you are talking about my machine, Fullmetal Chocobo, then you are looking at the machine that I built for rendering in 3D Studio Max. :D
 

Ilikepiedoyou

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I meant that in a good way. Your machine is very exotic. Did you need all the hard drives for max? What kind of work do you do in max? Animation, Architectural renderings.... Alos what kind of video card were you using?
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
I meant that in a good way. Your machine is very exotic. Did you need all the hard drives for max? What kind of work do you do in max? Animation, Architectural renderings.... Alos what kind of video card were you using?

No, the hard drives definitely weren't necessary for Max. But I was also doing video editing on the tapes from my miniDV recorder, and I have lots of tapes. So I got lots of hard drives, and downloaded them all at once.

In 3DS Max (I've had version 5 and 6 I believe), I mostly did animation and stills. I prefer making stills and then using Photoshop to make it into other stuff. I was using an AGP rendering card, the PNY Quadro 4 900 XGL. Nice card. Rendered a hell of a lot better than the 6800GT OC I got later from my wife. That card couldn't render for sh!t. But I was hitting limitations in my scene setups from the 900, so I needed to upgrade. Sadly, it would have been too expensive to do, as I would have to get a new card, mobo, RAM, and the new version of Max, so I am going with programming instead. As such, I parted out my server (I'm keeping the case for modding projects, as I'll be using it later), and I'm currently building a gaming machine.
 

Smartazz

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Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
I meant that in a good way. Your machine is very exotic. Did you need all the hard drives for max? What kind of work do you do in max? Animation, Architectural renderings.... Alos what kind of video card were you using?

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing about your gpu.
edit: nm
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Smartazz
Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
I meant that in a good way. Your machine is very exotic. Did you need all the hard drives for max? What kind of work do you do in max? Animation, Architectural renderings.... Alos what kind of video card were you using?

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing about your gpu.
edit: nm

I quit rendering after my wife bought me a BFG 6800 GT OC for my birthday or something. Before that, I had a PNY Quadro 4 900.
 

Smartazz

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Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Originally posted by: Smartazz
Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
I meant that in a good way. Your machine is very exotic. Did you need all the hard drives for max? What kind of work do you do in max? Animation, Architectural renderings.... Alos what kind of video card were you using?

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing about your gpu.
edit: nm

I quit rendering after my wife bought me a BFG 6800 GT OC for my birthday or something. Before that, I had a PNY Quadro 4 900.

Do high performance gaming gpus(8800GTS) render well at all, and do the high end quadros game well?
 

oynaz

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May 14, 2003
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The life expectancy of a PSU depends a lot about the quality of the power it has to handle. The OP lives in New Jersey, and I believe the power quality there is among the worst in the world.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Smartazz
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Originally posted by: Smartazz
Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
I meant that in a good way. Your machine is very exotic. Did you need all the hard drives for max? What kind of work do you do in max? Animation, Architectural renderings.... Alos what kind of video card were you using?

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing about your gpu.
edit: nm

I quit rendering after my wife bought me a BFG 6800 GT OC for my birthday or something. Before that, I had a PNY Quadro 4 900.

Do high performance gaming gpus(8800GTS) render well at all, and do the high end quadros game well?

In my experience, no. The rendering cards stay about a generation behind their gaming cousins. They don't game well, but then the gaming cards don't render as well either. They are unable to run spec ific software that accelerates the creation of a scene, which is one of the reasons why the rendering cards are so wonderful. You kind of have to pic one or the other. I did consider running two cards in one machine, and have both monitors on a switch (two on one video card/ two on the other video card). But given the price of good gaming cards and rendering cards, that is a lot of money to spend.

With the newer cards, I have no idea how they would render, espeically with the newer version of Max, Maya and others, so YYMV.

 

Ilikepiedoyou

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Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
That card couldn't render for sh!t. But I was hitting limitations in my scene setups from the 900, so I needed to upgrade. Sadly, it would have been too expensive to do, as I would have to get a new card, mobo, RAM, and the new version of Max,

what do you feel is the bare nessary to do so, besides the new version of Max

 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
That card couldn't render for sh!t. But I was hitting limitations in my scene setups from the 900, so I needed to upgrade. Sadly, it would have been too expensive to do, as I would have to get a new card, mobo, RAM, and the new version of Max,

what do you feel is the bare nessary to do so, besides the new version of Max

The bare necessity to do what, exactly? Render? Hell, you could render on a P2-300 so long as the requirements for Max were met. It would take you forever to setup a scene, and then forever to actually render it, but it would work.

Just remember:

1) video card aids in the setting up of a scene. Your rendering cards (Quadros and FireGLs, etc) do this because they have the software to support them in doing so. And this is also why they cost so damn much. Along with the software for rendering to take advantage of the cards hardware, you also have hardcore driver support and certification to ensure the stability of the system.

2) Your processor (along with the storage & memory subsystems) are going to aid in rendering speed. So if you are doing a 30 minute scene, and each frame is 1280x1024, that is 54,000 frames at 1280x1024. If you do raytrace shadows instead of shadow maps, then each frame might be something like 15 seconds. That's a lot of time.

But you can very well get a decent video card for setting up the scenes, and just let the machine sit and render. I know people that do that.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
That card couldn't render for sh!t. But I was hitting limitations in my scene setups from the 900, so I needed to upgrade. Sadly, it would have been too expensive to do, as I would have to get a new card, mobo, RAM, and the new version of Max,

what do you feel is the bare nessary to do so, besides the new version of Max

If you are referring to hardware minimums to render, the I would say 2gb RAM, a C2D E6400, a decent mobo (there is no need for OCing in this system, because stability must be maintained), a PCIe Quaqro FX card (atleast a 1300--they are cheap enough on ebay), a 120gb boot drive, and 200gb storage drive, and a power PSU. You don't want to be limited by your PSU whatsoever, so get something that can EASILY handle your computers load and then some. It isn't worth it messing with PSU issues, trust me. And that system will let you render very well, and will keep rendering for a long time.
 

Smartazz

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Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
That card couldn't render for sh!t. But I was hitting limitations in my scene setups from the 900, so I needed to upgrade. Sadly, it would have been too expensive to do, as I would have to get a new card, mobo, RAM, and the new version of Max,

what do you feel is the bare nessary to do so, besides the new version of Max

If you are referring to hardware minimums to render, the I would say 2gb RAM, a C2D E6400, a decent mobo (there is no need for OCing in this system, because stability must be maintained), a PCIe Quaqro FX card (atleast a 1300--they are cheap enough on ebay), a 120gb boot drive, and 200gb storage drive, and a power PSU. You don't want to be limited by your PSU whatsoever, so get something that can EASILY handle your computers load and then some. It isn't worth it messing with PSU issues, trust me. And that system will let you render very well, and will keep rendering for a long time.

Do you do rendering for a living or for a hobby?
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Smartazz
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Originally posted by: Ilikepiedoyou
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
That card couldn't render for sh!t. But I was hitting limitations in my scene setups from the 900, so I needed to upgrade. Sadly, it would have been too expensive to do, as I would have to get a new card, mobo, RAM, and the new version of Max,

what do you feel is the bare nessary to do so, besides the new version of Max

If you are referring to hardware minimums to render, the I would say 2gb RAM, a C2D E6400, a decent mobo (there is no need for OCing in this system, because stability must be maintained), a PCIe Quaqro FX card (atleast a 1300--they are cheap enough on ebay), a 120gb boot drive, and 200gb storage drive, and a power PSU. You don't want to be limited by your PSU whatsoever, so get something that can EASILY handle your computers load and then some. It isn't worth it messing with PSU issues, trust me. And that system will let you render very well, and will keep rendering for a long time.

Do you do rendering for a living or for a hobby?

Hobby (unfortunately). :) I did spec out a machine for a friend who does it for a living, of sorts. He goes to school for it now, and him and his group won a contest with their short, and he built a machine with the prize money.
 

CallMeJoe

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A quality PSU will typically last until you need to upgrade it because your power requirements or the interface standard have changed, and it will not support the new hardware you buy.