This has been going on for at least a couple of decades now. PSU buying advice you’d hear from random PC gamers really would be “if a power supply is heavy, it’s probably good”
I’ve seen a PSU with a straight up thin layer of cement in it.
Redditor finds heavy block of iron shavings inside cheap PSU, also appears to lack safety protections
Submitted 11 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 11 months ago
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.
makyo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
phx@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I’ve given similar advice but it’s more “light is likely no good, but don’t just trust that it’s heavy”
anyhow2503@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This reads like an AI generated news story about a reddit post.
xkforce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
BudgieMania@kbin.social 11 months ago
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 where "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
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
you can easily tell an LLM to sprinkle a couple typos or spelling mistakes into a text
Dettweiler42@lemmyonline.com 11 months ago
Considering that writer is pumping out multiple articles a day, they most likely are to some extent.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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 …
cybersandwich@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Maybe it’s his accent?
frezik@midwest.social 11 months ago
There’s supposed to be copy editors for that sort of thing. It’s their job to have a copy of Hacker and a red pen at their desk.
I worked for a small, local newspaper in high school, and the copy editors would endlessly complain about one of the most prolific contributors. Her articles were nearly unreadable before the copy editors did their work.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
I have to copy-edit my own work, and I, too, complain about the illegibility of copy before I fiercely edit it.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Right, this made it past at least two people, assuming they work at all traditionally
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 11 months ago
To quote Boris the Blade: Heavy is good, is sign of reliability.
Parabola@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If it doesn’t work, you can still hit him with it
Apollo@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
“Why do they call him the bullet dodger?”
“… because he dodges bullets, Avi.”
funktion@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Anything to declare?
Yeah. Don’t go to England.
aniki@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Jurassic park did it way before Snatch
frozengriever@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Direct Reddit link in case anyone wants to avoid SEO spam
GingeyBook@lemm.ee 11 months ago
But now I have to give Reddit traffic.
I’m conflicted
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Was it made by Kia?
poopkins@lemmy.world 11 months ago
For those of us out of the loop, what did Kia do?
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Metal shavings took out some of their motors.
slowwooderrunsdeep@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 11 months ago
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.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 11 months ago
UL listing is more than just a logo on the product. They run a public database where anyone can verify the certification.
CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 11 months ago
Isn’t this pretty common in a lot of consumer electronics? Pretty sure power banks and hard drives frequently have weights added to them
aniki@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Only in cheap chinese shit. Don’t buy cheap chinese shit.
sabreW4K3@lemmy.tf 11 months ago
Why? What’s the benefit of adding weights? Surely smaller and lighter is better?
RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
scrooge@infosec.pub 11 months ago
Feels more premium
r00ty@kbin.life 11 months ago
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.
nomecks@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I remember opening up Powmax power supplies and seeing hand soldering and trace tape evwrywhere
bruhduh@lemmy.world 11 months ago
At least they grounded it)))
sirico@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Cheap out on a lot of things in a build, never the PSU
Zozano@aussie.zone 11 months ago
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.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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
Reaper948@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I had an ASUS GPU do the same thing once, never had that happen before with any other brand.
UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think Nexus and Jay found a lot of Asus products had problems.
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 11 months ago
The only thing that you can really cheap out on is the case. With all the other components cheaper just means getting a lower spec component from an A-brand. Buy a cheap cpu/ GPU/ mobo from Wish or AliExpress and you are bound to get crap.
r00ty@kbin.life 11 months ago
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.
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 11 months ago
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.
boomzilla@programming.dev 11 months ago
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.
HubertManne@kbin.social 11 months ago
Like the first thing I learned about building a pc.