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General question about PSUs and HDDs


Mat1926

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In another thread, a user's PSU fried 3 of his HDDs, now I've been dealing with IBM compatible PCs since 1993 and in all these years this never happened to me. Yet I am curious, if the cables are connected properly is there a possibility that this might ever happen?!

 

Thnx

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3 hours ago, Mat1926 said:

In another thread, a user's PSU fried 3 of his HDDs, now I've been dealing with IBM compatible PCs since 1993 and in all these years this never happened to me. Yet I am curious, if the cables are connected properly is there a possibility that this might ever happen?!

 

Thnx

Yes, PSU's don't always go gently into that good night, sometimes they kick and scream on the way out and put out WAY too much voltage.

 

Well designed PSU's typically fail by just turning off, but it's not unheard of for one to go rogue and tear up everything its connected to. Due diligence when buying a PSU is a must.

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Few years ago, I think I was dealing with WD green/blue not sure but definitely WD, maybe 1 TB or so... I was trying to connect it through an external adapter, and although you can't connect the power cable (the usual PC y-cables) in the wrong way, for an unknown reason, I managed to connect it that way!

 

Upon powering on the adapter, It gave a big spark, yet the drive survived! I was lucky I guess...

 

Thnx

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The PSU contains a switching logic that measures the output voltage and adjusts the frequency or length of switch pulses to keep the output voltage at the expected level. The bigger the PSU is, the easier it is for the PSU to produce really big overvoltages since bigger PSU can move more energy.

 

If the feedback loop or one of the components creating the reference voltage breaks, then the PSU can start to produce incorrect voltages. Good PSU may contain additional logic where a second voltage supervision circuit measures the produced voltages and cuts off the output if any of the produced voltages goes outside the allowed range.

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People often compromise too much when buying power supplies. I suppose they are just not as glamorous as other computer components. I always buy Tier 1 power supplies (Corsair AX, RMx and SF series) as I consider anything lower to be false economy. The one that did all the damage was the same brand but lower down the list.

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