making a pc psu more stable

[Thunderchild]

so what if I put some large electrolictic condensers on the outputs of my computers psu to help it cope with little burst and improve overal stability will it work or will I fry everything ?

 

[hjl4]

No you wont fry anything. But a computer psu is often stable enough. Why would you need it even more??? There is little ripple coming from the psu, is it worth the effort??

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

You might even make it worse? - the feedback is designed for the size of capacitors used, increasing the capacitance may slow the response time.

 

[Thunderchild]

hm perhaps I best leave alone I just can't understand what they say about better and worse quality psus and the fact that a bad psu can cause a computer to crash a lot considering most stuff now runs off the 12 volt rail via an onboard regulator I can't see what all the quality psu fuss is about as long as it delivers the power right ?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

hm perhaps I best leave alone I just can't understand what they say about better and worse quality psus and the fact that a bad psu can cause a computer to crash a lot considering most stuff now runs off the 12 volt rail via an onboard regulator I can't see what all the quality psu fuss is about as long as it delivers the power right ?

I thought most ran off the 5V and 3.3V rails, with fairly little off the 12V rail (apart from drives)?.

Unless the power supply is faulty, it's not really likely to cause crashes - FAR more likely is a poor incoming mains supply.

 

[Thunderchild]

no not anymore that was old ATX1+ specs the new ATX2+ specs dictate much less power from the 5 and 3.3 and more use of the 12 V, if you look at a modern motherboard (made acording to ATX2 standards) it has its own switching regulator for the cpu, the video card once run of the psu's 5 and then 3.3 volt rail now also takes its power from the 12 rail via another regulator on the video card, I think this is partly due to the escalation of power consumption especially by once trival things like video cards that now rival the cpu in consumption, running off the 12 volts and converting it onboard means the carrying of 1/3 the amperage as the conversion is done right next to the component needing it. memory now runs at 1.8 volts so another onboard regulator is used and probably for the motherboards chipset too, nowadays there seems to be little that is not run from the 12 volt rail of the psu I would not be surprised to see the 3.3 and 5 volts disappearing totally in the near future. if you have a new pc that requires a 300 W psu an old one will not work you need a new one and vice versa a modern power supply cannot handle older pcs because there is no longer the required amperage on the 3.3 and 5 volt rails

 

[Hero999]

Perhaps it might think the large capacitor is a short circuit, power down for a few seconds, power up again and oscillate.

 

[picasm]

hm perhaps I best leave alone I just can't understand what they say about better and worse quality psus and the fact that a bad psu can cause a computer to crash a lot considering most stuff now runs off the 12 volt rail via an onboard regulator I can't see what all the quality psu fuss is about as long as it delivers the power right ?

If you buy the more expensive, high quality psu, then you should get:

A higher quality design, using better quality components.

The PSU power rating will be more realistic - sustainable not just for a very short time.

Better efficiency and low noise.

Designed to fail safe. Some of the ultra-cheap ones have been known to occasionally fail with over-voltage and destroy expensive PC components!

 

[Thunderchild]

okay okay I'll leave well alone then and get a new psu beings as I have just got a nice new mobo cpu and ram and Vga card