Cheap out on a lot of things in a build, never the PSU
I’ll also argue you shouldn’t skimp out on a motherboard.
I once owned an Asus Ranger VII. When I turned it on for the very first time, it lost its magic dust, and fried my RAM.
RMA found the MB was faulty, so they covered the RAM too.
This is from ASUS too, so I can only imagine how the chances of this sort of accident rises as you reduce the cost.
I had an ASUS GPU do the same thing once, never had that happen before with any other brand.
I think Nexus and Jay found a lot of Asus products had problems.
The only thing that you can really cheap out on is the case. With all the other components cheaper should just mean getting a lower spec component from an A-brand. Buy a cheap cpu/ GPU/ mobo from Wish or AliExpress you’d get crap.
I think the point is. If you buy a cheap GPU it’ll either be a fake (lower spec with borked firmware) or lower spec branded. So the worst that happens is you have lower FPS, or it just doesn’t work. Same with all other components. They’re rarely off spec to the extent they will damage other components.
But a cheap switched mode PSU? Yeah the failure mode of switched mode supplies without proper protections is a high voltage on the rails feeding your components. They can take out your board, GPU, Drives and depending on what protections the mainboard has, the CPU and RAM too. Not to mention your precious RGB!
I remember back in the 90s/2000s we had a “server” where I worked at the time. I say “server”, the company cheaped out and had a high street PC builder make them. They were essentially desktops in a bigger box with expensive CPUs and things like tape drives. But yes, they cheaped out on the PSU and it popped. It took out a £1k Tape drive, about the same value in hard disks, and pretty much everything else that was connected.
It was not cheap to get that back up and running, I can tell you.
I’d argue don’t cheap out at all, and acquire high quality components over a period of time where it’s affordable. You can build yourself a PC to last the next fifteen years instead of 3. I’m on a first generation i7 still playing modern games at moderate settings, because I poured $1700 into it back in 2011. I am finally upgrading this year to AMD’s newest socket AM-5 with a 12 core chip, which will hopefully be useful for another decade or more.
The old PC even survive a lightning strike, the power supply I selected took it like a champ and sacrificed a bunch of MOVs to save the PC.
6 years on a Ryzen 1600 with an Asus Mobo now. Intel before. Best buy I ever made in my PC-history, apart from my curved WQHD Monitor. Not playing very much but games like CS2, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Far Cry 5, Yakuza 0, Ghostrunner, Witcher 3 run very well on moderately high settings (Most of them on Linux). If I’d invest in a good AMD graphics-card, I’m convinced I could play most modern games on high settings.
Congrats for going the AMD route. You will be so blown away by your 12-core monster.
Like the first thing I learned about building a pc.
This has been going on for at least a couple of decades now.
PSU buying advice you’d hear from random PC gamers before the age of having a plethora of engaging-to-watch tech YouTubers really would be “if a power supply is heavy, it’s probably good” outside of a slim minority of people who actually regularly read PSU reviews from PC hardware mags and articles.
I’ve seen a PSU with a straight up thin layer of cement in it, as well as bits of metal stuck to the inside. It’s nothing new.
I think we should be fair and give credit where it’s due, that advice may have been going around but more likely in reverse form – “if a PSU is very light something’s wrong”. Any gamer with half a brain has long since learned to buy PSU’s based on reviews coming from reputable testing labs. There have been such labs available for a long time now, jonnyguru.com (Jean-Claude Gerow) started doing detailed PSU analysis around 2006 I believe.
To me this is the most important reason for building your own PC. If you don’t care or don’t want to research each part then sure, get a prebuilt. Otherwise, it’s really nice to know what’s in it and do your research on each piece so you know it’s quality and will be supported.
Warranty is the biggest reason for a prebuilt. Anything goes wrong with it and you’re not spending money on things to test and experiment with. You send it in, it comes back working.
You get warranty for parts too. Unless you meant warranty as a substitute for building know-how.
It’s a convenience factor I think. Send the whole thing away and it comes back working. Opposed to having to find the faulting hardware and determining the type of fault and dealing with the vendor for that specific part in hopes that it’s actually the issue.
I don’t personally view that as a convenience but understand the sentiment. If my PSU died, or something similar, and I had to send my entire machine just to get it fixed, that translates into working downtime for me.
It’s nice to just have some spare parts or your old parts to swap into temporarily while you rma the dead part. Of course, this assumes that you can do a bit of hardware troubleshooting (which I admit isn’t something most laypeople can do).
I’ve given similar advice but it’s more “light is likely no good, but don’t just trust that it’s heavy” as well.
The cement is probably missed with lead to keep the radiation in ;-)
This reads like an AI generated news story about a reddit post.
The sad thing is that it almost certainly isn’t. The spelling mistakes that were made aren’t characteristic of AI generated blurbs which means they paid someone to write this lol.
Yeah this type of “thing in Reddit happens…” articles have been going on for a long time, ever since it took off. It’s what drove me off traditional media and into reddit in the first place, so many articles were “Redditor does this” “Redditor discovers that” that I eventually was like fuck it why wouldn’t I just go to the source of all of this lol
you can easily tell an LLM to sprinkle a couple typos or spelling mistakes into a text
“Write the article in the style of a junior high student” probably gets close enough to be believable, who needs an editor!
There’s no point in doing that
Yes there is. It clearly creates doubt as to whether it was generated. As exemplified by the discussion you’re commenting to. Bold to come on and just … say something already demonstrated as wrong…
Can you not even understand what’s happening in front of your own face?
Considering that writer is pumping out multiple articles a day, they most likely are to some extent.
To quote Boris the Blade: Heavy is good, heavy is reliable.
If it doesn’t work, you can still hit him with it
“Why do they call him the bullet dodger?”
“… because he dodges bullets, Avi.”
Anything to declare?
Yeah. Don’t go to England.
Jurassic park did it way before Snatch
Direct Reddit link in case anyone wants to avoid SEO spam
But now I have to give Reddit traffic.
I’m conflicted
Was it made by Kia?
For those of us out of the loop, what did Kia do?
Metal shavings took out some of their engines.
I just looked this brand and model up and don’t see it yet, and I don’t see it on the side of the housing, so I’m gonna guess this doesn’t have a UL listing. That’s usually a good starting point to see if it’s reputable.
Relying on a UL logo isn’t much protection as you must trust that the company is being honest in using it. Best bet is to rely on a company’s reputation, which may not result in you getting a quality product, but it should be safe at the very least.
UL listing is more than just a logo on the product. They run a public database where anyone can verify the certification.
https://www.ul.com/services/digital-applications/ul-certification-database
Good to know. Thanks for sharing the link
Isn’t this pretty common in a lot of consumer electronics? Pretty sure power banks and hard drives frequently have weights added to them
Only in cheap chinese shit. Don’t buy cheap chinese shit. Heavy stuff is heavy because transformers and huge MOSFETs are pricey.
Why? What’s the benefit of adding weights? Surely smaller and lighter is better?
People think weight = quality.
Sometimes it can indicate something is better made, like something made with lots of plastic vs more metal. In a PSU you need lots of metal for the windings, cores, and power stabilization components. It should have some heft to it.
Unscrupulous manufacturers will sometimes throw chunks of metal into an item (like Beats headphones) that do nothing except make a thing weigh more to prey on the sense that weight means better quality.
Feels more premium
In certain devices (batteries and power supplies) there’s a minimum weight that can realistically store or convert a specified amount of energy or power.
So if you buy a 1000w PSU and it’s too light, you’re going to know it is fake. So they add the weight to make it feel right for the power rating. In this case this is a double-whammy of a failure waiting to happen. A PSU with a lower than advertised rating, coupled with a lack of safety circuitry means it’s more likely to fail due to the overload applied, and when it fails it’s more likely to go out in a big way.
I think they were asking about legitimate benefits of adding weights to consumer electronics.
I could see it making sense in a hard drive to dampen vibrations but that’s a stretch
There legitimately aren’t any, so no, I doubt they were asking that.Derp, yes they were, context is important kids! Leaving the rest of my original answer, as it’s accurate:In some handhelds, you might see small counterweights added to make them easier to hold for long periods, or to stop them tipping over when in a table, but for internal components (like power supplies) there’s never a need to add weights.
That’s definitely what they meant, I don’t know why you’re so certain otherwise. Just because a question doesn’t have an answer doesn’t mean it wasn’t asked.
I remember opening up Powmax power supplies and seeing hand soldering and trace tape everywhere
At least they grounded it)))
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