This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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 don't think I'll ever buy an asus board again. I've had so many problems over the years with their boards. I used to think they were quality
I gave up on Asus after a motherboard went up in (literal) flames when a cap blew a month into owning it. The RMAed it and the new one was DOA. They blamed my power supply and wouldn't do a second return..
I bought an ASRock and it ran flawlessly for 5+ years. Yeah...it was definitely the power supply that was the problem, Asus..
Wow that's pretty extreme. I found their RMA process to be pretty shitty and I didn't quite have those terrible issues. I did have to send I think 3 different boards back to them. They were slow and required a lot of communication to get it done. It's been years ago so I forget details but I remember each time, until the last time, thinking I just had bad luck.
My story was from 15+ years ago when I was less knowledgeable and assumed Asus was the best because people on [H] said so. Afterwards I looked into it and found tons of people having similar RMA woes and I learned to research further than the HardOCP community forum lol
Haven't bought an Asus product since so I have no idea if they're still bastards
ASRock was an Asus spinoff but was later bought by Pegatron (which is part of the Asus holdings).
Well the spinoff seems to be better
Yeah, it's weird because often enough the spinoffs may even share some infrastructure, but it's the pricing and support that are different.
Another good example is Virgin Mobile, which belongs to Bell, but their pricing and service are generally better.
Their laptops are equally shit.
Fucking thank you! I feel like I am taking crazy pills when these kids start praising ASUS "quality" and my 20 years in IT and 30 years of being a PC building lad has taught me that Asus and acer are some of the cheapest, most garbage crap you can buy.
I know it's all antidotal but I've been running Asus boards in my PCs for years and I've never had a single problem.
*anecdotal
Also, when someone wants to say science is wrong because they've personally seen different, it's "anecdata" (that's not an official word but I like it 😂)
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.
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.
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
Considering that writer is pumping out multiple articles a day, they most likely are to some extent.
I really long for the days that journalists proofread their work for obvious mistakes. Pathetic:
But RedditCringe990 on the PCMR subreddit did, and found a power supplies ...
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."
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 remember opening up Powmax power supplies and seeing hand soldering and trace tape everywhere
