I've been running my 4 module version Avalons at 350mhz using the stock PSU. Is this bad?
I have had 7 Avalons at 350mhz running on the stock PSU for about a week. I did have to replace one PSU, but otherwise they seem to be running fine.
In my previous experience when a PSU goes bad, the whole machine just shuts off, after replacing the power supply everything is good to go and no extra harm was done.
Am I taking a large gamble of the PSUs failing and potentially harming the equipment?
I read in the Batch 3 thread that a four module Avalon @ 350mhz runs at 930 Watts at the wall. I think the Avalons only ship with 850w PSUs. So obviously what I'm doing is probably risky, I'm just wondering how risky??
I would say you are very lucky. We have 2 4 module avalons with stock PSUs, and both are very unstable at anything over 300 MHz. Replaced one so far with a 1200w corsair PSU, and it runs solid at 350MHz static overclock. In fact it runs better with less error on static 350 than with 350 as a start point and --avalon-auto option.
Not sure why yours are OK, but consider yourself lucky!