HOW LONG IS A PSU LIFESPAN.

raza · 7 Mar 2017 at 22:43

OCZ StealthXstream II OCZ700SXS2 700W ATX12V v2.2/ EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Power Supply currently in my third pc gaming build a Skylake i7 Nvidia series 970, 16 gig, ssd, M.2 HDD, Bluray 3 case fans 100mm and is about 6 years old ? And if I should replace psu have these things changed much in 6 years what Wattage would be enough for me.

hornetstinger · 7 Mar 2017 at 22:45

700W is plenty. I'd say replace every 10 years

raza · 7 Mar 2017 at 22:46

Thank you hornetstinger.

Armageus · 7 Mar 2017 at 22:46

Not sure whether that was a particularly quality unit when new, but personally 5+ years is decent service for a PSU, capacitors etc do deteriorate over time.

I would say a 550-600W would be fine (if anything components are less hungry now)

raza · 7 Mar 2017 at 22:51

read this post "If you haven't had any problems like instability or random shutdowns/lockups I really wouldn't worry about it. I've got builds with much older Corsair PSUs. Admittedly they're not under much stress though" ive had all three in recent months what do you think.

Armageus · 7 Mar 2017 at 22:53

On newer PSUs such as https://www.overclockers.co.uk/supe...old-modular-power-supply-black-ca-05b-sf.html they come with 7 years warranty, so that should give you an idea of effective lifespan. £90 over 7 years = £12.80 - worth it to protect any new (and considerably more expensive) components when you next upgrade.

Rroff · 7 Mar 2017 at 23:23

In terms of capacitors - at the higher end of normal operating temperatures if you have some barrel scraping jobbie with 85C/2-3K hours rated capacitors you are looking at around 3 years before they'd start to fail on average while some decent quality 85C caps could last 7-10+ years while 105C caps with like 7000+ hour rating could easily hold up like somewhere in the region of 18 years or more.

Drop the operating temperatures 10C and you can double that.

HoneyBadger · 8 Mar 2017 at 01:51

New EVGA's come with a ten year warranty!

Steeps · 8 Mar 2017 at 09:47

Had some cheap rebranded units last 8-10 years used daily before going bang, only took themselves out and not the system. Got a Seasonic that started acting up (unable to boot from cold, bios failures but still stable at full load) just after the 5 year warranty ran out, that was 3 years ago and still going. It was going to get swapped out at the next PC upgrade but I've not needed to upgrade the PC.

pastymuncher · 8 Mar 2017 at 20:04

The StealthXstream2 units were actually very good budget psu's and were much better than the original versions. The downside is that compared to a modern psu their efficiency is pretty poor and being 6 years old that will have gotten worse over time. I would be in two minds over this. One part of me would say that if it's working fine then keep it going. The other side would say it's time to put it aside for testing purposes and buy a modern fully modular, efficient psu of gold rating or above. For your current build I would be looking at a 550w psu from the likes of EVGA, Superflower, XFX or one of the Bitfenix Whisper M series.

Rroff · 8 Mar 2017 at 20:08

Can't remember if it was the first gen GameXtream or StealthXstream but one of those was interesting in that it would lose the ability to put out ~100watt max output a year until it failed/couldn't supply enough stable power for your system.

Psycho Sonny · 9 Mar 2017 at 15:02

Use PSU til it dies.

This is why you buy a quality PSU in the first place so when it does die it doesn't kill all your components along with it.

I bet you a half decent PSU could easily last a lifetime under normal use. In fact i think I've had my current PSU in the main rig for around 14 years.

Rroff · 9 Mar 2017 at 15:07

I specced up some of the components using "top shelf" stuff like Panasonic FM capacitors - if kept at or below 25C the on paper endurance was approx 138 years lol - somehow I doubt it would last that long though.