10 year old PSU

havok

havok

havok

Associate
Joined
14 Apr 2004
Posts
69
I have a 10 year old XFX Pro 750W Core Edition and wondering if I can reuse it for a new build? I am thinking of a I7-10700K build.

Other key parts I would reuse would be
ASUS 2070 SUPER DUAL OC EVO 8G
soundblaster x3 (external usb)
SSD & 8tb HDD & new NVMe
 
WJA96 said:
Why not?
Click to expand...

Terminal_Boy said:
The big electrolytic capacitors used inside PSU do degrade with age and tend to fail by going bang and covering everything in green goo. Alas, when they fail like this, they often damage other PC components.

Budget another £120 for a decent 750W PSU.
Click to expand...

This^ As Terminal Boy has stated, all them capacitors that have dried out over the 10 years of use will shorten the PSU lifespan, best case the PSU goes pop, worst case it can damage other hardware, something I have seen happen myself though not to my PC...
 
OK, I just e-mailed Seasonic support because some of my Seasonic PSUs have lifetime warranties and the rest are 12 years and they’re saying they rate their “better“ PSUs for 20 years continuous use. Which is 60 years of running 8 hours per day, 7 days per week or 84 years running 8 hours per day, 5 days per week. Corsair haven’t responded yet, and I suspect I’m fine with my “better” PSUs but if you bought cheap, then yes, ditch your old PSU.
 
That's DC-DC design, so not entirely outdated tech...
But if you can afford Intel's brand luxury prices, you should be able to afford at least only decade old efficiency standard PSU.

With bad availability situation this woudl be one of few higher end PSUs in stock.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/frac...ted-fully-modular-power-supply-ca-08t-fd.html



Terminal_Boy said:
The big electrolytic capacitors used inside PSU do degrade with age and tend to fail by going bang and covering everything in green goo. Alas, when they fail like this, they often damage other PC components.
Click to expand...
Primary capacitor failure is one of the safer for PC parts failure modes.
Because PSU's outputs simply shut down from loss of power.
Just for scale passing basic electric safety requirements requires 3kV withstanding isolation between primary and secondary.

It's secondary whose failure you should be worried about, because that can let voltage go haywire and secondary caps going increases ripple.
 
my second hand corsair hx 850 is about 10 years old is it going to explode ? first ive heard of this
as far as i know it will work fine, it will just stop outputting enough power causing crashes etc / stop working one day rather than explode i'd imagine.The only psu's I've ever heard of going bang are Hipers and no brands.
 
Last edited:
I'm running a 10-year old PSU. From my research 'going bang' is something related to bad caps like in the Hyper-R series and not just because caps get old. I found an article about retesting old PSUs and basically what happened is they were slightly less efficient and had more 'wobble' than when first tested after years and years of hot continuous use.

If you would be willing to consider an AIO, I don't really understand the logic that says you wouldn't risk an older PSU. I mean, don't use a Hyper-R old PSU - but a good quality older PSU might even be safer than a new one - because the design is true and tested and the model you're using has been working for so long!
 
I would use a 10yr old PSU if it was from a good brand. Not sure how well XFX was rated at the time, and what warranty it had on it originally. My Corsair is probably getting on for that age now, I've no concerns.
 
If it was a low end PSU I would agree stay clear but if its good quality one 10 years old is not an issue Jonny Guru has even backed this up in one of his videos when asked about re using older PSU.
 
I would have no problem using it (for now), just think of it as a 650W PSU now to accommodate capacitor for degradation. Nobody ever buys a PSU with the intent of running it at 100% load anyway.
I am a retro gamer and I have seen some messes over time where capacitors have spewed their guts all over the circuit board. That said, that is 90s or early 00s technology plus approximately 2-2.5x the age of the PSU in question.

I only recently upgraded my 2008 Corsair TX750 because it was loud in comparison to my water cooled PC!

I'd use the old PSU for the time being, and when the prices come down (Covid has sent them nuts!) buy yourself a 700-850W unit from a high end manufacturer with a zero RPM fan mode and forget about it for another decade! Just think how much wattage you will ever need then add 100-200W for good measure. I bet 99% of the people on the forums have higher end power supplies than they need (wattage, not quality!). My current one is 860W. I bet my Ryzen 3600 rig with an overclocked 1080Ti, 5 fans, water cooling pump would be fine with a 600W PSU.
 
Last edited:
Age isn't the biggest factor, it's usage and the temperature when it's in usage. If it was on for 10 years 24/7 at a high output. Yes maybe reasonable to replace, otherwise no. Unless you have been having issues with it, which we would assume not.
As a ball park figure, increasing the operating temperature of a capacitor by 10C will halve its useful life. So the environment of the PC and the PC case cooling is a big factor.

Remember most consumer electrical products will have a PSU of some sort in them, very few run directly from 240 V. And they can last much longer then 10 years.
My fridge is 28 years old and would be running on load around 5-6 hours a day. Now its PSU is way more basic than a PC PSU, but the capacitors used are still comparable for age related comparison.

OpenToSuggestions said:
I would have no problem using it (for now), just think of it as a 650W PSU now to accommodate capacitor for degradation. Nobody ever buys a PSU with the intent of running it at 100% load anyway.
Click to expand...

Capacitor ageing doesn't work like that, PSUs can get very slightly less efficient over time, but still below 1% difference for the large aluminium electrolytic capacitors in a good PSU. If it's more then that they are pretty much about to blow.
We aren't too worried about the smaller ceramic caps in the PSU.

What does happen is the Equivalent Series Resistance will increase and the total capacitance (how much power it can store) can lower over time. Most of the main electrolytic capacitors in a PSU will have a capacitance tolerance of +- 20%, meaning a 330µF rated capacitor could be the 264µF - 396µF range and still be in tolerance and be perfectly fine to run. Most will normally be well within +-5%, but it's possible some will be worse.

It's the Equivalent Series Resistance that changes over time. But the degrading is normally very gradual to a point, then it will fall of a cliff. :/
This is when the PSU will start to fail, or in the extreme go pop.

http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/104114/1/IECONv2a.pdf - A good read if your interested, but quite technical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalent_series_resistance
 
Last edited:
It depends on the original quality, also how much load it was under.

I have a 12 year old Seasonic X650 that had an easy life in a software development machine, I have no issues re-using that.

However if you had some average quality unit that was regularly running at 50%+ loads then consider changing it.

I think this capacitor ageing thing is a little over rated, I have some 1991 Pioneer HiFi amps all original still working fine. I do however have some 100% original Taito Space Invaders (2 of them x Blackpool Pleasure Beach) from 1979 and the capacitors on those are totally gone and leaking.

Back to computer PSU. When I left uni I worked at a company where one of the directors had worked as a software engineer on Concorde (head up display + fly by wire all FORTRAN). His advice on PSU's was get the best quality you can and choose a wattage that's double the peak wattage of the computer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom