tt400 wroteIt's not the failing rates that I am concerned about but rather what is causing them to fail. The big mistake many people make is buying power supplies that are sufficient. The power supply should exceed the requirements of the system since power supplies are most efficient and live the longest if they're used at 50% capacity. When power supplies are overused, the capacitors wear out quicker. It wouldn't be smart to but a 500W PSU just because your system will pull 400W at most. If putting pressure on your PSU to see how much it can handle is some sort of bragging right, then I don't understand it. This will wear out the capacitors over time. Some brands make stronger and longer-lasting capacitors, but the basic functionality of any PSU is the same across the board.
Of course you get a PSU with headroom to promote lifespan. That's a given. But they age slower than you think. 30% is extreme.
My specs:
DX79TO
i7-3820
16GB 1600 DDR3
2 TB WD 7200RPM
GTX 260
I haven't overclocked my GPU nor my CPU, but to skimp on the PSU is simply not something I will do. It is one of the most if not the most important unit in a system.
CPU is 95W since it's similar to the 2600K in terms of being a quad core on the same architecture and similar clockspeeds, but I'll go with Intel's 130W.
GPU is ~182W.
Add in 10W / RAM stick, let's say, that's 40W.
A single hard drive, 12W.
Optical drive, 20W (blu-ray).
4 fans @0.36A, let's say, 16W.
Total = 130 + 182 + 40 + 12 + 20 + 16 = 400W
You do know that your maximal system power draw would barely break 400W when stress-testing to the max right? You'll be doing continuous writes to the hard drive, burning a Blu-ray disc at full speed, stress-testing the CPU with Prime95, stress-testing the GPU with, let's say, Furmark or OCCT (slaughtering it), performing reads / writes to the RAM at full speed (impossible with maximum FPU stress test). 1200W is overkill for such a system. That's all I'm saying.
