Read somewhere that old lube is the culprit like 90% of the time.

That Micro Center guy was not wrong but he was also kinda harsh about it. I did the same thing in my 4000D build two years back, stuffed every single cable back there so tight that you could not even see the fan headers, and yeah it looked fine but it also looked like nothing. Then I swapped to a white cable kit and started running the 24 pin with a soft curve right across the grommet, and now people actually stop and look at it. There is something nice about letting the work show instead of treating it like a dirty secret. Hiding it all felt safe but it also felt kind of empty once I changed it up.

Wow, what finally got him to look at the numbers?