What are the signs of underpowered PSU

[MRGOOCH]

What are the warning signs of underpowered PSU?

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Instability at high overclock, especially with Quads. Also video-related issues when gaming and/or when case temperature is higher than average.

 

[GalvanizedYankee]

High PSU air discharge temps. Even if a unit is rated at 50C, I would not want to have it work long periods at those temps.
Lock-ups and general instability cause by voltage drops. High transient loads can not be picked up with a DMM but the motherboard monitoring software might....just might.
Old systems needed high 5V wattage. Newer systems requior high 12V wattage. So an old 500W PSU might not have the 12V wattage a newer 400W PSU might have.

 

[Modelworks]

smoke

 

[mxnerd]

Lock-ups and suddenly shutdowns.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: GalvanizedYankee
Old systems needed high 5V wattage. Newer systems requior high 12V wattage. So an old 500W PSU might not have the 12V wattage a newer 400W PSU might have.

Absolutely correct.

My thermaltake 500w is 29A on 12v with 32A on the 5v. It is underpowered, im getting very high Vdroop and have to undervolt the processor and overvolt the PCI-Express just to get enough stability to surf the web.

The new Corsair 520HX i have on the way is 54A on the 12v and 24A on the 5v. Nearly twice as much power on the 12v rail for a unit only rated 20w higher.

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

The new Corsair 520HX i have on the way is 54A on the 12v

So a 520W PSU can handle a 648W load? Uh, no.

You don't add the rails to find the total +12V capacity. You look at the "Max Combined Wattage": here, 480W or 40A.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: s44

Originally posted by: Acanthus

The new Corsair 520HX i have on the way is 54A on the 12v

So a 520W PSU can handle a 648W load? Uh, no.

You don't add the rails to find the total +12V capacity. You look at the "Max Combined Wattage": here, 480W or 40A.

heh, just looked at the sticker on the side, thats alarmingly misleading

Most PSU makers dont even show a max combined wattage for each rail, is it usually substantially lower like 520HX? Ive always haphazardly added them together.