Power Spikes? 20+ years working in a computer shop, never heard of a "power spike" damaging other components. Is this a Europe thing?
A bad PSU can cause damage at least two ways: 1: If there's a bad capacitor the output can have a lot of ripple, which in turn place a lot of stress on voltage regulation of other components and eventually may cause them to fail 2: If some components totally fail it can send a power surge, though actually this is rare so I likely shouldn't have used term 'power spike'
But the important thing is, atm the PSU OP is considering would costs $50 after rebates, whereas new components in total cost nearly $1 000. If the PSU is already more than 7 years old I don't think it's advisable to plug it into a new system and see how well it would do if you used it until it's 14 years old, not when a new PSU would be like 5% increase to building cost.
Stick with Intel + Nvidia and you're most likely fine. Go with AMD if you have less money and are okay with some suckage.
Negative much? Both AMD and Intel will do what he wants. If he is playing games, they are for the most part not CPU bound, but GPU bound. Benchmark differences are minor for the vast majority of games and Intel is a lot more expensive and you still might have to deal with BIOS issues when dealing with Intel. Intel's constantly shifting motherboard and BIOS issues make me hesitant to recommend them unless you really need a top end CPU.
Stick with Intel + Nvidia and you're most likely fine. Go with AMD if you have less money and are okay with some suckage.
Negative much? Both AMD and Intel will do what he wants. If he is playing games, they are for the most part not CPU bound, but GPU bound. Benchmark differences are minor for the vast majority of games and Intel is a lot more expensive and you still might have to deal with BIOS issues when dealing with Intel. Intel's constantly shifting motherboard and BIOS issues make me hesitant to recommend them unless you really need a top end CPU.
LMFAO My advice is just wait until what is announced at CES 2019 in like 2 weeks. It's more like, "Go with Intel + Nvidia if you like overpaying and are okay with incremental, negligable, upgrades year after year."
I have definitely seen my share of issues caused from poor power quality.
The classic example is lightning hits a line (phone line, cable line, power line, etc), and stuff just blows up. Not often literally, but sometimes.
Now, this isn't as big an issue as it once was, but it still does occur occasionally. Surge protectors are your protection against this, and by now, they are pretty ubiquitous.
A bigger issue, and one that most people just gloss over: The power doesn't go out entirely, but the lights dim a few times and then it comes back on and is fine.
That is the absolute worst thing you can do to power electronics, and just electrical equipment in general. Brown outs cause more damage than most people think, because you don't notice it immediately like a lightning strike. As voltage sags, current goes up. Current is what causes heat. Rapid variations in voltage wreck havoc on capacitors and chokes, and cause regulation circuits to go nuts. The worst part is after a brown out your equipment may be damaged but continue to operate for a while, only to fail a few hours (or days) later as a degraded cap or choke starts to overwork to compensate until it finally gets to the point of failure.
A good UPS with low voltage protection is the protection against this. Most people just get a basic UPS and think it's good, but unless it has low voltage protection (APC and CyberPower call it AVR, it may have other specific marketing names), it won't protect your electronics against a brown out.
Comments
1: If there's a bad capacitor the output can have a lot of ripple, which in turn place a lot of stress on voltage regulation of other components and eventually may cause them to fail
2: If some components totally fail it can send a power surge, though actually this is rare so I likely shouldn't have used term 'power spike'
But the important thing is, atm the PSU OP is considering would costs $50 after rebates, whereas new components in total cost nearly $1 000. If the PSU is already more than 7 years old I don't think it's advisable to plug it into a new system and see how well it would do if you used it until it's 14 years old, not when a new PSU would be like 5% increase to building cost.
I have definitely seen my share of issues caused from poor power quality.
The classic example is lightning hits a line (phone line, cable line, power line, etc), and stuff just blows up. Not often literally, but sometimes.
Now, this isn't as big an issue as it once was, but it still does occur occasionally. Surge protectors are your protection against this, and by now, they are pretty ubiquitous.
A bigger issue, and one that most people just gloss over: The power doesn't go out entirely, but the lights dim a few times and then it comes back on and is fine.
That is the absolute worst thing you can do to power electronics, and just electrical equipment in general. Brown outs cause more damage than most people think, because you don't notice it immediately like a lightning strike. As voltage sags, current goes up. Current is what causes heat. Rapid variations in voltage wreck havoc on capacitors and chokes, and cause regulation circuits to go nuts. The worst part is after a brown out your equipment may be damaged but continue to operate for a while, only to fail a few hours (or days) later as a degraded cap or choke starts to overwork to compensate until it finally gets to the point of failure.
A good UPS with low voltage protection is the protection against this. Most people just get a basic UPS and think it's good, but unless it has low voltage protection (APC and CyberPower call it AVR, it may have other specific marketing names), it won't protect your electronics against a brown out.