So back in 2021, I happened to of bought myself a new PC. I was going to make it myself, however with how bad the market prices were for everything it was practically impossible to get a good deal on anything I really wanted. Prebuilds were the next option, and thankfully I didn't live too far away from a Best Buy. I see the price, 1,100 USD for a Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB of DDR4 3200 Ram, a RX580 8GB GPU, seemed pretty good for me and what I was wanting. I snatch it up, and for a while that was that.

Then around 2022 having found out that Walmart was selling a new Nvidia GTX 3070 got me interested, and for basically retail price too. I didn't have a ton of money at the time but I went ahead and took one and really that was about it for me. I wasn't really thinking too hard about my desicion and thankfully it fit right into my computer. Nothing really could change how happy I was and for a while, things worked great!

Then suddenly I kept getting Black Screens, Errors that tell me pretty much nothing about why my computer was doing it. I start to look into it, seems like a lot of other people are also having this issue and it put me through the wildest goose chase to figure out my own issues. Did like the most "Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling" processes I possibly could, nothing fixed it. Tried to adjust my GPU to make sure it wasn't sagging or anything, it was not. Ran many benchmarks and test to see if it was Other things that could be the issue, it did nothing.

I then think to myself... huh. You know I should proabably check my power supply to see if it was the right amount of Watts. I never thought to think about it cause my RX580 was about 60 less watts then my GTX 3070 and didn't think that was much a difference maker to really get another PSU. Plus it was working fine before! Why would I of needed to? I was basically in denial until everything else didn't work and sighed. "Fine, I'll check my PSU"

Guess what? I found out this thing was a 600W power supply from... Apevia. I heard about the company before but why exactly? Well uh... turns out their power supplies are completely made on the cheap and are some of the worst possible ones you could put into your PC if you had any choice. Sheesh. Well I just went ahead and bought a 750w PSU from Evga and that'll be getting to me tomorrow so hoping and praying that it does the trick.

Lesson of the story? Always research the Company that your PSU comes from. Could go from causing you to lose all your hardware to basically saving your life.

Remember kids, mustard and ketchup cables means its a ticking time bomb.

I''ve never made the mistake of cheaping out on a PSU or buying a prebuilt witha crap PSU. Already heard all the stories of PC's dying because of it before building my first pc.

Also just a heads up, avoid molex cables like your life depends on it.

supercool22: It didn't have Ketchup and Mustard Cables, I was just being a lazy ass and didn't want to check the manufacturer and all lmao

Honestly as long as it's a decently reputable company then usually you're fine, but I literally only heard nothing but bad things from Apevia and all and should of just checked it first thing before I got a new Card-

In my opinion the best PC's are Dell and HP.

You have to be real careful with the chargers or PSU. I have found it is best to by from the manufacture you might pay more but it is designed to work on your PC. I made the mistake one time of buying a charger from Walmart. It said it would charge my laptop it was not a manufacture. It lasted only a few months. I learned to check reviews and more details. Thankfully, I got the correct charger and cable from the manufacture.

Yes Mustard and Ketchup cables are usually not a good thing.

tornadocam: Honestly speaking I don't really like to go with OEMs, for the most part. They have their place but usually harder to upgrade any parts with you having to go through the manufacturer to be able to and I'm not really a fan of that. I've heard they've gotten a lot better about this in recent times but still, can't fully trust those types of Builds.

The only real reason I got a Pre-build was cause the price was a lot cheaper then going the route of building it myself. Keep in mind I also didn't really have the money to even get much more upgrades so I just called it a day and didn't think about it before it was too late. Thankfully though my computer is now running perfectly with my new PSU.

Aw man, that sucks.

I built my PC around 6, closing in on 7 years ago and it's starting to get dated. I had no idea what I was doing back then when I first put it together. I was on a really tight budget to the point of buying used parts, etc.

I bought the cheapest PSU I could find, which thankfully happened to be EVGA (a reputable brand). I think I went for the lowest wattage I possibly could have looking at the parts (1050ti, Pentium, G4600etc) I had and thankfully I have never had a problem in my 7 years of using this machine. It's been an absolute beast.

I want to see how long I can keep running this thing as I only really play low requirement indie games and use it for various other low demanding tasks such as Microsoft Word, Audacity and just browsing the web. I like to think of it as a car and that if I tried it well and maintain it properly it will last forever.

MoblinGardens: The sad thing about PC Parts is they aren't meant to last forever, even if you properly maintain them and take good care of them, they're eventually going to die out. Had it happen to me a lot generally in the past decade of owning my own PC. Hell I had like a really good GTX 650 I took pretty great care of that suddenly decided to fail on me.

Hopefully though if it happens to you, you'll be able to find yourself a new replacement in no time. While I don't often like to get pre-builds myself they're pretty affordable so long as you find the right price (And one that allows you to upgrade.)