how hot is hot. You didn't check, ok.
Every one dies early?
You mention "a few years". Well, what's the normal lifetime of a power
supply? Probably not more than a few years anyway.
This is a distinction, yes I meant long term use, not just a
few days of runtime. Just like you wouldn't be able to
predict the second your car might seize up if you redline it
continuously till it fails, I can't put a day, week, month
on when any given passive psu will fail, there are too many
variables to do this. I would expect most to fail within 3
years if ran at their rated max load, but any other system
is another variable among many.
We can instead see from all reviews that the internal temps
are higher, and it is established fact that components do
fail at an accelerated rate. These passive units do have
some unique 'sinking but they're not substantially different
when it comes down to discrete part specs.
A good PSU will last over a decade. I have quite a few that
have, AT PSU that run fine still in addition to early ATX.
What have we seen from other PSU running hotter? Failure in
months or a couple years, usually.
By the above (and below) I am considering one scenario only,
use of a passive PSU in a (either very close to, or
entirely) passively cooled case, no fan-forced airflow
through the PSU. Part of the reason for this is due to a
problem inherant with the passive psu, that most cases have
the rear exhaust fan which would result in air intake
through the back of the PSU, the heat from the PSU being
dumped into the case, then expelled out the back and this
again drawn up and back into the PSU for another cycle. If
someone where to mount only intake fans on the side and/or
front of the case, these passive PSU would fare (and effect
the system they're in) far more positively.
People buy new PSUs even without them dying.
Yes, that is one possibility, but does it mean the old one
was thrown away? Generally not if it was decent, it either
remains with the system as a whole or is reused. Certainly
there are exceptions but we have to at least consider the
typical situation, that a PSU is bought for a system and
stays with that system - then eventually it becomes the
first failure point (odds are), unless the motherboard had a
particular flaw like defective capacitors.
When considering an old 80486, it can't do the basic things
people expect - realtime video, audio, modern video
resolutions for typical 2D work with enough pixels that
everything doesn't look blocky in a windowed environment.
Now contrast that with what a Core2Duo and XXXX will be able
to do 10 years from now... it will take some less common
activity to make such a system undesirable for most common
uses, unless there are some revolutionary breakthroughs on
the next so-called "killer app", like maybe virtual reality,
but frankly I don't see it becoming more than a reason to
upgrade a video card in the next few years we'd hope a PSU
would last.
Bare in mind that many people buy new computesr every few years
anyway. Either because their MBRD dies, or because it isn't up to date
enough for them.
They don't generally throw away the old one, it still needs
a PSU. I wish I remembered where I saw it, but there is a
site online that did a survey about average system age, and
the average age is now close to 5 years... meaning a
substantial number of systems older than that. What was
available 4 years ago, in 2003?
nForce2 and Athlon XP,
http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/02/14/more_nforce2/
3GHz Pentium 4,
http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/02/03/pentium_4_with_dual_ddr/page20.html
Frankly I think the survey I saw was off, I'm suspecting
the average systems belong to people not so exposed to
online surveys and are now older than 4 years. As
importantly, I know a LOT of people who when their system
did fail, had no desire to do anything except get their
present system working again as cheaply as (reasonably)
possible, if it wasn't their PSU that failed they had value
in it and wanted to continue using it.
Regardless, surely you know someone who would gladly accept,
even pay money for a 2+GHz Pentium 4 system? It's going to
need a working PSU? There is no real justification to the
idea that it's ok if parts die, they should always last
until the last person who would want to use a system, gives
up on it. That's going to be a long, long time for anything
built today, it will be a part failure causing a typical
system to be thrown away if not just laziness of the owner
to not make it available to anyone who might want it.
Making parts with shorter lifespans ultimately results in
increased garbage, unnecessary addition to landfills,
manufacturing pollution. Even when an original owner doesnt
want a product anymore, it is better that it still work.
And when doing that, new computers often use a new power supply
specification.
So you'd just throw away all old parts? Seems a bit of a
waste, unless you were assuming the parts died- the opposite
of what I advocate, to make choices that result in a system
continuing to work and have a potential purpose to
"somebody". Systems fast enough to run WinXP without
severe pain for email, office, web browsing, are now 8 years
old. That's all a lot of people use their systems for.
Around last year I started setting up P4s, they needed the 2x2 thing.
My old power supplies didn't have that. And I got a good deal on a
load of good quality new PSUs that had it.
I was buying PSU with 2x2 connectors well over 4 years ago,
in the Pentium 3 era but I don't recall the first... but one
of the earlier might've been an Antec PP303XP. It only had
15A on the 12V rail, but this was before CPUs came near even
100W TDP, which with a roughly 92% board VRM subcircuit
efficiency, would be under 9A, plenty of current left for a
handfull of fans and a couple drives.
What has changed? Mostly 12V current, if your older PSU had
enough you didn't need a new PSU, just an inexpensive
adapter. Soon thereafter we saw 400W+ PSU with 18-20A on
12V rails, and so on.
It's very odd that you say that every single one of them runs hot.
Not so odd, what did you think the purpose of the fan was if
not to remove that heat? "Hot" is relative though, I didn't
mean you can use it to fry eggs (but actually, you probably
could come close in some of them).
If that is your experience, why do you keep buying them? Or do you get
them for free?
I get most of my non-preferred parts (for free) after they
fail, but with the newer breeds of PSU you can find online
reviews where the passive unit reviews do have particular
attention paid to internal temp, as it is a pretty obvious
factor when the PSU is so costly and (fortunately) derated
so it looks better than most of a similar wattage that had
fans.
I doubt you fix peoples' computers where the people have fanless power
supplies.
If every single one of them dies, then this would be a serious problem
to look out for. If I found that, i'd have started a thread, giving
exact details.. seen if anybody else had similar experiences.
If you have a hot skillet on the stove and I told you that
every single egg you put in it will fry, do I have to cook
every single egg you have before you believe it?
Cause and effect. You are thinking in terms of unknown
variables on a PC computer component, while I am considering
known facts about parts lifespan, in particular electrolytic
caps... especially because the solid alternatives are so
incredibly costly in high capacitance values, I keep hoping
one of these very expensive passsively cooled PSU will be
built befitting it's high price, as a case with a lot of
holes or screens in it, $5 worth of upgraded parts and a
couple extended heatpipe sinks (if that) can't account for
the added retail cost.
So if you were able to keep track of all owners of a given
passive PSU, yes it would be fair to say that on average,
they have a significantly shorter lifespan in number of
years, because they are not keeping the shortest lived parts
as cool, not substituting the substantially higher priced
parts that would fare better over the long term, only what
is required for immediately stable operation and hopefully
the duration of a warranty (but given the high price, it's
bound to be factoring in a potentially higher RMA rate
during the warranty period as well).
the point is that at least he provided some data. You provided none.
It's not necessarily my burden to hunt down information you
could find for yourself, unless it's something really
obscure but with any model PSU you might consider, you have
the applicable search terms and can seek a reviewer who has
taken measurements but as importantly, is a 3rd party
without a bias. Then comes experience and context, seeing
the non-defective cap failures from elevated temp.
You have no idea how many bad caps I've thrown away from
junk brought to me. Not "defective" caps, just not the
right part for the environment it was in so it's too hot,
from ambient condition and/or ESR too high. Maybe you have
seen a lot of failed caps? If so, can we agree that heat
kills them? If we can't agree on that, I suggest you head
over the badcaps.com and wander around for awhile, or read
the major cap manufacturers spec sheets and technical
guides.
There is nothing that changes the situation in a passive
PSU, unless they start building them with more appropriate
parts. If you have one you are considering, by all means do
look up the specs on the parts so you can see whether
appropriate changes were made.
yeah but given what you said, for all we know, they could die in an
instant.
At least now we know somebody had them work for 2 days, it's an
improvement on your data!
Not an instant, I expect that the majority will last a
couple years, but it's a large variable how positively or
negatively pressurized a case is from other fans (if
present), how heated that case is if there aren't any fans
in it, the room ambient temp, system load average as well as
peaks, hours of on-time. Just as every specimen of any
brand and model won't die at the same time, we can expect
some of the passive units to live quite a bit longer than
others, and never have any overheat-shutdown problems in the
interim that reviewers have caused.
Ultimately I am suggesting that you read some reviews if you
hadn't already, but also to consider that running a PSU for
a few hours is not any qualification of fitness for longer
term use. Resist trusting a reviewer's tendency to try to
judge fitness (especially considering I had never claimed
you couldn't run a system for a shorter period from one) and
just look at data, and ratings. A PSU has to live up to
them, that's the whole point of ratings, and if it does, how
long it will last.
If you really feel you would end up throwing away a power
supply after 4 years, maybe a passive unit is a reasonable
choice for you, if you are sure your system load on it is
low enough. It isnt really necessary though, any PSU can
have the fan running so slow it is not easy to hear if
higher temps are acceptible.
