That $90 'gaming' power supply nearly torched my whole rig
Bought a cheap off-brand PSU on sale last month to replace a dying one in my old build. It worked for about two weeks, then started making this faint whine and the PC would randomly reboot during games. Pulled it out and the plastic around the 24-pin connector was actually melted, no joke. That $90 saved me $40 upfront but almost killed a $600 GPU. Anyone else get burned by these no-name PSUs, or is there a decent cheap brand that's actually reliable?
Melted plastic around the 24-pin is terrifying, that's not just a dying unit that's a fire waiting to happen. I had one back in like 2019 that popped a cap and shot this little puff of smoke out the back vent while I was mid match, scared the crap out of me. Two weeks is way too fast for it to fail like that though, sounds like those cables were way under spec for the load. Glad your GPU walked away from it.