Insufficient PSU hurt a system?

[Okasa]

I have more than 30 systems with a mobo that requires a PSU of approx 500W. 4 harddrives, ~5pci cards are installed. The system was run with a PSU of approx 420W or so (not enough in any case). The system wouldnt boot, hung on drivers (most likely due to insufficient power). However, the systems, now with a 750W still hang on drivers.

My question is this: is it possible that the PSUs with the low wattage have hurt the system components? If so what kinds of problems would be possible?

 

[beray]

Originally posted by: Okasa
I have more than 30 systems with a mobo that requires a PSU of approx 500W. 4 harddrives, ~5pci cards are installed. The system was run with a PSU of approx 420W or so (not enough in any case). The system wouldnt boot, hung on drivers (most likely due to insufficient power). However, the systems, now with a 750W still hang on drivers.

My question is this: is it possible that the PSUs with the low wattage have hurt the system components? If so what kinds of problems would be possible?

Burning out system components are the resultant problem.

PSUs are made using the fundamental equation below...

POWER = VOLTAGE x CURRENT

The PSU varied the CURRENT to maintain VOLTAGE level (regulated voltage --> V = I x R).

When VOLTAGE drop lower, the CURRENT will shoot up upward to maintain the equation, unfortunately when there isn't enough POWER the VOLTAGE will keep dropping and the CURRENT will head up toward infinity.

INFINITE amount of current will burn out anything and everything.

I got that from here ---> http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9921

 

[DSF]

Edit: I should leave this to people more knowledgeable on the subject than I.

 

[mpilchfamily]

A system on a small PSU will not get damaged unless the PSU dies rather hard and the OCP and OVP, if any, don't save the components. Most often an under powered system won't start or will have multiple errors. It may have caused soem curruption in your HDD. I suggest you try a repair instll of windows and see if that helps. Your system should be fine.

 

[Okasa]

thats what i was worried about mainly, the HDD not having enough power to successfully write to the disk at all times and causing corruption. very odd though is that the systems were rebooted in safe mode, booted fine (with the good PSUs). then rebooted in non-safe mode and they booted fine...this happened to every single machine that had the problem...

ive started the new thread in general hardware because im not convinced that this is a PSU problem anymore. Here is the other post if you have any new ideas:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2196042&enterthread=y

 

[Gillbot]

When VOLTAGE drop lower, the CURRENT will shoot up upward to maintain the equation, unfortunately when there isn't enough POWER the VOLTAGE will keep dropping and the CURRENT will head up toward infinity.

INFINITE amount of current will burn out anything and everything.

That's the THEORY. Nothing can supply infinite current and the current getting TO the components is limited by the amount of current the wires and circuits can carry.

 

[beray]

Originally posted by: Okasa
thats what i was worried about mainly, the HDD not having enough power to successfully write to the disk at all times and causing corruption. very odd though is that the systems were rebooted in safe mode, booted fine (with the good PSUs). then rebooted in non-safe mode and they booted fine...this happened to every single machine that had the problem...

You're accidentally lucky. The greater the insufficient power margin the less likely the system components get burned-out.

The larger, the clearer the insufficient power gap the faster the PSU got shut off, minimizing the time duration which system components being subjected to infinite current.

The smaller, the less define the insufficient power gap, the more stable system, the less predictable the problem occurrence, the slower the PSU got shut off. When the problems do finally show up, system components always burned-out.

Originally posted by: Gillbot
That's the THEORY. Nothing can supply infinite current and the current getting TO the components is limited by the amount of current the wires and circuits can carry.

In real life infinite is relative, to a program which could only count to 16384, 32768 is an infinite number causing calculation overflow.

The PSU and the wires would far surpass the system components infinite limits. Which is why when this happen, the PSU nearly always survived.

Ever run into low end OEM emachine? Their PSUs tended to be marginally insufficient, working "rock solid" then always turn out dead burned-out hardware with survived PSUs.

There are millions of dead burned-out low end emachines with still perfectly functional PSUs, this is the usual way for them to die.