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Just found out PSUs lose efficiency over time, my 8 year old unit was running at 68% efficiency
I checked my old Corsair PSU with a Kill-A-Watt meter last night and nearly fell out of my chair when I saw it was pulling 450 watts from the wall to deliver just 306 watts to the system, has anyone else tested their aging power supplies?
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claire_hart535d ago
That 450w for 306w sounds about right for an old unit. I had a similar issue with a Seasonic that was 7 years old. It was pulling 420w to give me roughly 290w, so I swapped it for a new 80+ Gold unit. The new one pulls about 320w from the wall for the same load, which cut my electric bill a little. Just check the 12v rail voltage with a multimeter if you can, old PSUs can drift there too and cause instability.
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derek_perez5d ago
That Seasonic was probably a decent unit for its time though. 7 years is a lot of capacitor aging. The 12v rail drift is real, I've seen old units sag under load by almost 0.3v. But swapping a 30% efficient unit for a new one isn't always a big savings on the bill. I did the math once. Going from 70% to 87% efficiency on a 300w load saves you like 30 watts. That's maybe 3 bucks a month depending on rates. Not nothing, but not a game changer either. Usually the bigger win is stability and ripple control, not the electric cost.
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So basically my power supply was doing a better impression of a space heater than a computer part, huh? Derek_Perez is right though, the real win with a new one is just not having to worry about random shutdowns in the middle of a game.
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