PSU fails dramatically

[u/Front_Cookie_1198]

[u/Cartoonjunkies]

This is why PSUs are the one thing you should never skimp on in a build. Every other component of a PC can fail pretty badly, but chances are you’ll only be replacing that component.

If your PSU fails badly enough, you’re replacing your PC and your house.

[u/JollyDevs → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I've had two PSUs fail in the last 20 years and neither damaged any PC components thankfully. One of them blew a cap and then the cap casing shorted in the PSU much like this video. It was very violent. Replaced the PSU and it booted just fine. So even if they fail, a decent PSU will usually limit damage to itself. Though a Seasonic etc will be way less likely to fail in the first place.

[u/VMPL01 → u/JollyDevs]

My Seasonic failed in 2024, about 11 years after I got it. No sparks, some caps just burned and smoke came out, rest of PC is fine. After that, I've paid a bigger premium for an EVGA G3 with a Gold Standard.

Unfortunately, the situation in the video takes place in Vietnam, my country and gamers usually skimp on PSU here. Most won't pay more than 50 bucks for one.

[u/Jacktheforkie → u/JollyDevs]

I’ve seen one fail, it just stopped outputting power, the rest of the components were reused by a neighbour because my mum got a new pc to replace the one that died

[u/Shoukyaku → u/Cartoonjunkies]

Real and fking true. This is the one single tip I tell my friends whose PCs I’ve built for them, which is to never, EVER, skimp and cheap out on PSUs out of all the components. The difference between the two is that:

- you pay extra for a better PSU and get a PC devoid of any electrical problems for a decade or longer, and you can use it for future PC builds with zero worries

OR

- you skimp and cheap out on the PSU and your PC decides to say “fk it” at a random moment at any time, and it bricks itself alongside multiple components of your PC, or decides to become an arsonist and burn your whole house down along with it

So far, every friend of mine heeded my tip, and 4-5 years later (for more than half of them), they have yet to experience any electrical problems or mishaps, and some even managed to upgrade from AM4 to AM5 pre-RAMpocalypse w/o changing their PSUs.

[u/Cartoonjunkies → u/Shoukyaku]

I’ve had the same PSU since 2020 and it’s still running strong. They have a pretty impressive lifespan if you buy a good one.

Easiest way to tell if you’re getting a good one: if they offer a 5 or even 10 year warranty on the PSU, they trust their product.

If they offer a really short warranty like a year, or even worse no warranty at all, stay away from that shit.

More than likely you’ll see your fan go before anything else on a PSU, the newer capacitors have insane lifespans.

[u/Shoukyaku → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I can hella attest to this. I've had this Seasonic Focus GX 750W PSU of mine since building my AM4 rig in 2019, which had R5 3600x (changed to 5800X3D later on) + GTX 1660 Super (eventually upgraded to 3060 Ti later on) until I transitioned late to AM5 and had to sell everything except the PSU and the GPU, got new AM5 mobo + RAM, upgraded to 9800X3D, and even 8 years later, I still use the same PSU.

Funny part is I still haven't reached the end of this PSU's warranty yet (10 yrs) and it has never failed me throughout the years I've had this PC from AM4 to AM5.

This is why I really, REALLY stress this tip on to my friends: that they should never skimp or cheap out on PSUs, given not only the aforementioned warning applies, but also because having a pricier-yet-good PSU means it'll be the most futureproofed part in their whole PC's build, and it can even probably reach the AM4 platform's true EOL support one day (it will never happen cuz we all know AM4 platform is eternal lmao).

[u/MindControlledCookie → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I'm still on my original Corsair PSU from 2008!

[u/alkhdaniel → u/MindControlledCookie]

Yeah, thought it was pretty funny everyone else mentioning 5-7 year old psus surviving as if its some accomplishment only high quality psus can manage.

Meanwhile theres tons of shitty bottom of the barrel oem psus thats survived for 20 years.

My Corsair is also fairly old, from 2011 i believe, swapped it this year though :( but found a new home for him.

[u/MindControlledCookie → u/alkhdaniel]

Yeah, my entire rig is about 5 years old at this point and people are like "my 5 year old PSU has lasted so well" xD

[u/Makermika → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I've got an EVGA Supernova 650W in my rig that's been chugging along since 2016

[u/unknownobject3 → u/Shoukyaku]

Can confirm. My old PSU was a low-tier 500W unit from FSP. The thing killed a GPU, damaged the VRAM of the next one, and rendered my previous keyboard completely unusable due to the amount of chattering or not registering keystrokes. Even my current one has some damage but it's limited to 2 or 3 keys and it's occasional. I bought a Corsair RM650e (2025) and all my issues magically disappeared. I got kind of lucky, but I don't wanna know how close I was to having to replace basically the entire PC.

[u/ecaflort → u/Shoukyaku]

So my pc cut my power breaker yesterday and smoke came out of the PSU. You seem to know a lot about this so I figured I should ask you: How screwed am I? I don't dare to plug my pc back in, but how do I then figure out what parts are broken?

I could buy a new PSU, but if it turns out other parts broke as well then I'd rather hold off until I have money saved for a new pc in a year or so.. My work laptop will have to hold me over until then :(

[u/underground_avenue → u/ecaflort]

magic smoke: n.

A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function (also called blue smoke; this is similar to the archaic phlogiston hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up: the magic smoke gets out, whereupon the chip ceases to function, hence the smoke is essential for the chip's function.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_smoke

[u/Ent_Soviet → u/Shoukyaku]

A layer to this point, making sure you’re plugged into a surge protected outlets. Spend thousands on a custom computer, and they plug it and all the peripheries into an unprotected and over burdened power strip. 🫣

[u/Proglamer → u/Shoukyaku]

Don't forget that wonky rails of cheap PSUs can result in hard-to-troubleshoot system crashes

[u/PrinceVincOnYT → u/Shoukyaku]

how do you clean it after years of use from dust? I mean I can only blow in with a hand blower and not supposed to open it. And frankly I don't wanna remove it for cleaning xD

[u/Czibor13 → u/Cartoonjunkies]

It's not guaranteed though. I had an OCZ power supply for 7-8 years. No issues.

Upgraded to a Seasonic Focus+ Gold and it destroyed most of my PC in two years when it popped and let out a small flame.

[u/Shoukyaku → u/Czibor13]

Yea, the Focus+ Gold model had problems with high-end hardwares w/ powerful GPUs bcuz of sharp current/transient spikes tripping the Over Current Protection (OCP), which the Focus GX line addressed and resolved by revising tolerances and tripping vulnerabilities that the former had. I do know not every PSU, regardless how good it is, is perfect, but these good PSUs have been tried and tested by hundreds and will both not go up in flames like bad ones would at breaking point, or practically just trip itself off, with the PSU being the only one in need of replacing as a result.

[u/Xalara → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I'm also pretty sure an arc fault breaker or plug would've stopped it too. AFGFCI breakers, or plugs if you can't install the breaker, are you friend. So don't skimp out on electrical safety!

[u/connly33 → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I haven’t seen too many fail in the past 10 years or so with some exceptions, it’s much better than it was back in the 90s when cheap PSUs killing hardware wasn’t uncommon. I still only buy SeaSonic or high end Super Flower built PSUs though and run them until I need more power or the connector layout isn’t relevant anymore. I’d rather buy a stupid expensive unit and carry it through 2 or 3 of my daily builds.

My latest is an AsRock Taichi 1600 watt, it’s my first FSP engineered unit but from what I can tell it’s about as high quality as you can get without spending laboratory equipment money. I’d have no qualms running this thing for the next 20 years if it is still compatible with current hardware haha

[u/Afraid_Union_8451 → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I've heard things like this can kill you, his family might have needed to replace him instead of a component if he wasn't lucky

[u/theaviationhistorian → u/Cartoonjunkies]

The PSU is one of the few components I always buy new and never refurbished.

[u/Shinhan → u/Cartoonjunkies]

But don't just look at the price, look at one of the PSU tier lists because sometimes good brands will have a bad model.

[u/NordicHorde2 → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I spent more on my PSU than my CPU.

[u/Proglamer → u/Cartoonjunkies]

That's why I buy a 4kg class C extinguisher every 2 years (don't wanna bother with biyearly rechecks; also results in having a 2nd, older one ready 'just in case')

[u/boringestnickname → u/Cartoonjunkies]

Seasonic or nothing.

[u/TinfoilPancake → u/Cartoonjunkies]

My family once decided to visit their friends who lived in a village. It was for a month so I took my PC with us.

Three weeks in there was a critical short circuit in the electrical network. My PC pretty much flashbanged the room and it smelled of smoke. Two of the family's TVs got fucked.

I wrote it off as a cooked system since it didn't launch and the bang was... Well, real fucking bad.

Two weeks afterwards a service worker calls me. Says everything's fine, they just needed to replace one part of the PSU. It still works 4 years after that.

Never fucking skimming on a PSU.

[u/Educational_Quote851 → u/Cartoonjunkies]

Ok, I'm no expert but I feel like BURNING YOUR HOUSE DOWN shouldn't be a "ho-hum" NBD.

Why is that even a possibility?! Lots of things can cause fires but most are made with some kind of engineered safety to ideally prevent that. Who tf is building computers that EXPLODE?

[u/FukkingDeathMental → u/Cartoonjunkies]

Found out the hard way when I bought my first and last prebuilt years ago.  Everything worked fine for six months until something happened and the cheap PSU fried my whole system or enough components that building a new one was a better idea.

[u/TonySmithJr → u/Cartoonjunkies]

I have to explain this to EVERY single person that comes to me wanting to build a PC.

[u/ArmchairFilosopher → u/Cartoonjunkies]

My GPU died suddenly (it had a long life) and caused an HDD to fail, and nothing else.

[u/MoocowR → u/Cartoonjunkies]

This is why PSUs

No it's not, this is a catastrophic defect that has nothing to do with overall quality of a PSU model.

If your PSU fails badly enough, you’re replacing your PC and your house.

Literally any electronic.

[u/leech666 → u/MoocowR]

Why are you getting downvoted? As an electronics technician I totally agree with this statement. Any new electronic device has the chance to be dead on arrival. This is not a function of "if only you had spend 300$ instead of 200$ on a new PSU".

[u/unknownobject3 → u/leech666]

But that applies to basically any item in general, it has the chance to arrive broken. It's just much less likely that you'll get a defective PSU from a known and good-quality brand compared to some obscure Chinese manufacturer or a used unit that may already have problems.

[u/leech666 → u/unknownobject3]

Yes, okay. You're right. I think it's common sense to not buy bottom of the barrel trash PSUs from China. Stick to the name brands. Should have written that in my post. Still there is no 100% guarantee that even a Corsair won't burst into flames.

[u/unknownobject3 → u/leech666]

It's true that it can still explode or something, but it's true for any electronic item. It's just that the odds are much much lower with a good brand.