Somewhat OT - can underpowered power supplies damage a system?
Thomas Cameron
thomas.cameron at camerontech.com
Wed Aug 18 05:27:12 UTC 2010
Say, hypothetically, I have 8 identical Intel DG45ID motherboard-based
system with 8GB memory and a single drive with a cheap-o generic 300w
power supply. All running Linux, so sorta on-topic.
Say those systems have been running for over a year, but lately they've
been really flaky. Random lockups, sometimes they boot with garbage
characters on the screen instead of the normal OS boot, sometimes they
hang at various parts of the boot sequence, spontaneous reboots when
kickstarting.
Say the Antec web site says I need more like a 350w power supply, and I
read somewhere that PSUs tend to age and get less efficient over time,
so I am guessing that I've been starving these things for juice for
weeks or maybe months.
Hypothetically, could I have actually damaged these systems if the PSU
was under-powered? Or would a new, higher powered PSU fix the problems
I've seen?
I would guess that too much juice might hurt the systems, but would too
little actually damage anything?
I know it's not thermal, they're in a very cold room with dedicated HVAC
and the airflow is great.
Hoping someone who knows more about electronics can chime in.
Thanks
Thomas
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