PSU warning?

[CurlyWhirly]

I have read a few threads recently where power supplies have failed and in some cases taken the motherboard, graphics card out etc.

I have been lucky up to now and have never had a PSU fail so what I was wondering is that, generally speaking, is there any warning that it is about to fail like for example like the voltages fluctuating in a Hardware Monitor for example

When I look at my Hardware Monitor I get:

On my 5V rail I usually get 4.91V so if the tolerances were to drop like to 4.66V this would serve as a warning would it?

 

[CurlyWhirly]

If it has Q-Tec written on it then translate Q-Tec to Explosion imminant.

Yes I myself have read quite a few threads on the Q-Tec power supplies


Fortunately mine is an enermax 460W and I am under the impression that they are a decent brand

My power supply is around 4 years old though so whether it's coming to the end of it's life I don't know hence I was wondering about the warning signs like voltage drop etc.

 

[CurlyWhirly]

but any socket A is heavy on the 5 volt rail.

Is that because of the relatively high power consumption compared to AMD 64 bit processors?

To be honest I think the best you can do is buy a decent brand with enough juice to run your system comfortably, and hope you don't get unlucky.

I've used online PSU calculators and I have over 100W to spare.

Obviously if you start seeing symptoms of unstable rails, like lockups and spontaneous reboots on what is normally a stable system, then the psu should be on your list of suspects. But I wouldn't put much faith in the onboard voltage readouts - they're often very inaccurate.

Fortunately, my PC is as stable as a rock (touchwood).

my enermax died a while ago, didnt take anything with it

That's good news for me as I also have an Enermax.

p.s. I replied to this comment in another thread after having read that one first!

 

[CurlyWhirly]

It's just a fact of life (design) that Socket A chips use 5 volts, and socket 939 uses 12 volts.

As I have never had a socket 939 processor I had no idea that they ran on 12 V.
Thanks for the explanation BTW