Does cheap PSU really explode??

[faisalthegamer]

I live in India, and every people here buy Zebronics PSU. Which is damn cheap just 500 - 1000rs which is 8 -12 $ 😛. And as far as I know, till now, no ones PSU as exploded till now. So my doubt is does it really matter, about the quality about the PSU???

 

[DiaSin]

Its not about it exploding. Its about it not lasting, not delivering the proper power with the proper stability, and, potentially, frying every component in your computer.

 

[hsyuts]

It is unlikely for a PSU to have a glorious explosion. However, I seen smoke coming out of a PSU, and the whole room smelled like burnt plastic. The PSU took down the motherboard and the graphic card with it.

 

[faisalthegamer]

Its not about it exploding. Its about it not lasting, not delivering the proper power with the proper stability, and, potentially, frying every component in your computer.

It is just 500rs ~ 8$ i dont think anyone will mind changing it if it fails. As for the frying part, my brothers friend use their computer come to 12-15 hours and they use tat cheap PSU, till now they dont have any fault!!!

 

[ingtar33]

i had a psu blow up and take a motherboard with it. It was an old 500w antec that was supporting an old athlon 64 3000+ cpu overclocked up to a massively high and stable 2.6ghz (a 45% overclock, near enough) for about 5 years. never knew if it was the psu that cooked the motherboard or the motherboard that cooked off the psu. but i do know it was a spectacular explosion. It made a loud "crack" noise, and a blinding blue light like lightning was visible at noon in a bright room (even though the case had no window or side-panel/top vents) started a freaking fire i might add. Killed everything except the hard drive, disk drives and the old HD 3850 (AGP) gpu which somehow is still kicking now in someone else's old P4.

Damn near burnt the house down.

so yes, psus most certainly explode. I've seen the after affects of blown up psus, and saw it first hand myself. if you check out youtube you'll see people benching junk psus and have the psu catch fire right in front of them when all they were doing was drawing the advertised power out of the unit. so they certainly blow up.

 

[random stalker]

It's not just about crash, boom, bang - everything burns 😀

Well, cheap PSU usually can not handle voltage spikes well, thus there is a good chance it will damage your mobo or fry your hdd should one of those occur. Also, they tend to supply dirt power and damage components over time...

But back to your question - although they don't explode, they can burn pretty well - I handled some burnt computers back in the day, but now... Well... People kinda learned that they aren't so rich that they can buy cheap crap 😀 But it still happens from time to time...
Also, a little horror story: a friend had it's living room burned to a crisp due to a faulty PSU 😀

 

[mouse24]

I've had an old Enermax (must have been atleast 8+ years old) "explode" (caps popping I assume) then proceed to arc electricity within the unit. Needless to say at midnight in a quiet house... I needed a change of pants.

 

[faisalthegamer]

The reason why I used the word "explode" is because I read some one tell it really explodes. I too used to use cheap PSU and I think once I had to change my whole components, but I dont remember what was the cause!!! SO what is the chances of failure?? 50%??

 

[Cons29]

well, those cheap psu's will most likely last (giving some credit here) because they are paired with low power rigs.
try using a gtx 580 in that $8 psu (note i said 580 since recent gpu's have good power consumption)

and not just that, if you see how dirty (read: ripples) the output of those psu's, i wont use them. been using good psu's for years, well worth it. 5yrs warranty baby

 

[ingtar33]

The reason why I used the word "explode" is because I read some one tell it really explodes. I too used to use cheap PSU and I think once I had to change my whole components, but I dont remember what was the cause!!! SO what is the chances of failure?? 50%??

well, it depends on your definition of explode. If you mean like a grenade? nope. won't happen. if you mean caps popping making a loud BANG! combined with blue lightning arcing and burning your whole machine and half your room down in an uncontrolled electrical fire? then yes... that can happen with cheap or old psus/motherboards.

i mean total machine meltdown into a puddle of metal is certainly possible. there are a lot of hot parts in those computers that will burn pretty aggressively with all that electrical current feeding through the machine.

 

[faisalthegamer]

NOTE that all the builds are without GPU, now will the cheap PSU be any problem???

 

[bryonhowley]

A friend of mine had a cheap PSU go bad and it took the motherboard GPU and ram with it. Out of shear luck it did not take the CPU to. But with a $200 motherboard $80 in ram and $350 in the GPU it was enough. And eve at that his PSU was not super cheap it was a $60 Cooler Master that I suggested he not get in the first place but he did. Depending on how the PSU goes it can take the entire system with it.

 

[mouse24]

NOTE that all the builds are without GPU, now will the cheap PSU be any problem???

Well, its not just unreliability, there much more that can harm components than a PSU dieing. Ripple is a big one not to mention voltages being to high/low. I wouldn't use an 8 dollar PSU to power simple fans let alone the complex machinery that is computers.

I've spent more on a simple phone charger than that.

 

[ingtar33]

A friend of mine had a cheap PSU go bad and it took the motherboard GPU and ram with it. Out of shear luck it did not take the CPU to. But with a $200 motherboard $80 in ram and $350 in the GPU it was enough. And eve at that his PSU was not super cheap it was a $60 Cooler Master that I suggested he not get in the first place but he did. Depending on how the PSU goes it can take the entire system with it.

With cheap psus, money isn't necessarily the issue. there are plenty of $100+ psus i wouldn't trust. cooler master is the problem. i wouldn't trust any of their products unless i saw something independently tested and verified. I certainly wouldn't trust one of their psus. Too bad about your friend's system. but at least you did warn him.

 

[md1032]

Apparently I'm the weird one. I had a cheap PSU go out and everything was fine.

IMO, if you're going to buy a cheap PSU, buy one that's way overpowered so you aren't near the limit of what it can handle. Even that is no guarantee but it will extend the life. The thing that sucks when your PSU goes out is that you've essentially wasted your money and need to go out and buy the better one that you should have bought to begin with.