Question Should i reuse old power supply on new build

[rwh531]

Roughly 10 years old Thermaltake Tr2 Rx 750watt "W0382RU" Modular Power Supply seems capable of doing the job of powering 2 or 3 drives and a single high end graphics card that I probably wont add until it is the reason i don't meet the minimum system requirements of a game I want to play or the card itself dies, whichever comes first. Isn't their a way to check a psu's overall health by paying attention to the voltage and other statistics located in uefi bios ?​

 

[DSzymborski]

Definite no. When this was new, this was a poorly made, group-regulated PSU of ancient design. Now it's a decade-old poorly made, group-regulated PSU of ancient design.

As such, it's in Tier D in the power supply tier list in the Power Supplies forum, along with other low-quality PSUs, which means recommended only for very cheap, iGPU-only systems.

Article - [psucultists] PSU tier list rev. 14.8 (Final Update Jul '21)

PSU Tier List 4.0 rev. 14.8 (outdated) Last Update: 12-07-2021 Legend : Gray - EoL/obsolete and/or otherwise not recommended for purchase. Green - small form-factor (gold and blue colors are disregarded due to scarcity of SFX PSUs) Gold - best units in the tier (includes requirements for blue...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[rwh531]

Forgot i made this post but I do believe you are wrong sir when i bought this thing brand new the rating system hadn't been around very long, anything that had it was considered top tier. Honestly amazed, the rating withstood the test of time as it quickly became a gimmick used to drive the sale of higher wattage bronze = 800w or less while platinum became 1200w or more during the hayday of sli/crossfire.


All that said I am using it in the new system temporarily as unforeseen events forced temporary reallocation of funding

 

[DSzymborski]

Forgot i made this post but I do believe you are wrong sir when i bought this thing brand new the rating system hadn't been around very long, anything that had it was considered top tier. Honestly amazed, the rating withstood the test of time as it quickly became a gimmick used to drive the sale of higher wattage bronze = 800w or less while platinum became 1200w or more during the hayday of sli/crossfire.


All that said I am using it in the new system temporarily as unforeseen events forced temporary reallocation of funding

No, it's not, and it has nothing to do with 80 Plus, which is about efficiency, not quality. It's a PSU of completely obsolete design that was made as cheaply as possible from junky parts and is notorious for being utterly hapless at voltage regulation, ripple mitigation, and most other things.

You can use it if you want to, I can't stop you. Drunk drivers usually get home safely too, but it doesn't make it a good idea. At least here, your only risk is a shorter life for your new parts, not killing someone, so that's something, I guess.

But no matter how much you want it to not be junk, it is junk.

 

[Karadjgne]

It's all about the failure rate. Most decent psus (even the not so decent ones) have failure rates averaging 0.1% to 1%. The TR2 line last I heard was upwards of 20%, and those weren't restricted to just DOA items, but also smoked, blown, quitters, barely stable and every other reason/excuse/result you could apply to a psu.

Out of the 3 plants that manufactured the TR2's only one was semi-mediocre at quality control, the other 2 were complete disasters, as were the units produced there.

Junk is an understatement.

As far as 80+ goes, that's not even a Standard that applies, like ATX regulations etc. It's a Certification by a 3rd party (80+) who says that it holds 80% or better efficiency at 20/50/100% rated loads. Only halfway decent psus were put up for testing, because the junk wouldn't even get to 100% at rated load. So what ypu got was a bunch of fakes that had stickers or print on the box and 80+ ignoring the as the model would change before the court date arrived.

Many of the units tested were cherry-picked, hand crafted etc and not anything like actual production units.

Also take into consideration its closer to 10 years old, used the cheapest capacitors TT could get their hands on and guaranteed has suffered serious capacitor degradation over the years as a result. If the unit was rated at 600w new, by now its closer to 200-250w and anything higher will undoubtedly end up with a smoke show or bluescreen.