It can cause significant damage.
It can cause significant damage.
I have an HP PC with a Core i5 6th generation, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and Kali Linux installed. The power supply is clearly inadequate, frequently cutting out around eight times daily—most of these outages occur when the PC is active. I’m concerned about potential damage and want to understand what risks exist, especially since it doesn’t have a hard drive.
It poses a greater risk to your data than to your physical device. Sudden power cuts aren't much different from what happens when your computer powers down. The operating system doesn't have time to properly save everything and secure itself. If your PC is actively saving a file during the outage, that file might become corrupted. Don't worry about losing progress—just resume from the last saved point. A UPS would be a wise investment for you.
We use nearly identical systems running Linux Mint on an HP EliteDesk. This particular model features an i7-4770 processor. Power interruptions aren't frequent here, though we've experienced some voltage drops elsewhere. Likely due to excessive heater usage from the cold weather, which caused overloads and tripped breakers. Data loss should remain low. Browsers usually recall previous sessions, and LibreOffice tends to save documents as they work. Hardware issues aren't a concern—I haven't encountered PSU failures in the last five years, and these units are around 10 years old. They were released in 2013.