Undervoltage effects on a PC

[code99cc]

I'm in Europe so voltage here is 220. Today due to heat something happened with electrical wires on poles or something and an area in our town is now getting 120V instead of 220v. It kinda fluctuates between 120-220V.

When this happened I was on my PC watching YouTube. Everything was working fine but because I was worried something might get damaged I turned everything off just to be safe.

My question, what would happen to my pc if I ran it under these conditions?
This is out of curiosity only ... I know that over voltage can fry stuff but what about under voltage?

Thanks, I hope i didn't post this in the wrong forum

 

[atomicWAR]

Undervoltage can damage things too. Components not getting enough power can be damaged because the power delivery is butbut it is no where near as bad as overvolting. Also undervolting a CPU (like reverse overclocking) is fine I am talking about under volting the whole system and that is different. It needs a certain amount of power to run properly and not getting it can screw up the other connected components in ways that are tough anticipate. Power delivery is important. A little shouldn't hurt you but I would not run a system knowing the power is not stable.

 

[code99cc]

Would an ups protect me from undervoltage and/or fluctuating voltage?

 

[atomicWAR]

Yes a quality one should do exactly that.

 

[code99cc]

Wouldn't a psu with UVP protection .... well, protect a system from under voltage? By my understanding UVP stands for undervoltage protection, right?

Since it's obvious I need an ups, I did a little research and found out that I would need a sin wave ups or something because my psu has active PFC ... Problem is that those seem to be quite expensive ...
Are the normal ups that bad for an active PFC psu?

 

[atomicWAR]

it will yes to a degree...but half voltage that might be a stretch. You'll have to check the PSU with UVP specs.