[SOLVED] Motherboard, CPU and GPU with bad PSU. Seem undamaged but are they really?

[MelonHusk]

Bought a prebuilt PC with a used PSU, that turned out to be bad, and after first 2 months the HDD(used) died, then another one (new), then finally SSD(new) became read-only. I had no idea whats going on at first, since its the first PC I bought myself . So I stopped using the PC until I can replace the PSU.

I need to know. Since the other components like mobo, cpu and gpu worked fine and didnt seem to be damaged by the PSU, how big of a chance those components might indeed be damaged by the bad PSU and whether it all gonna bite me later ? I mean, if something is damaged will it be apparent right away or will the damage that is done by PSU progress like some kinda disease later, even long after I replaced the power supply? Or are those components not as sensitive as HDDs and SDDs and I might be fine?

 

[Lutfij]

Best list the specs to your entire build, and add an image of the PSU's sticker, if you can make out what's stated on the sticker, i.e. I had a system back in 2003 that had it's PSU blow up, yeah it blew up with some blue sparks. I got a hold of a reliably built PSU but the system was behaving erratically, BSOD'ing on random times, not finding my discrete soundcard and sometimes dropping my storage devices. Soon I noticed that I had to replace ram...2 years later the motherboard kicked the bucket.

Case in pint, a badly built PSU will take out everything it's connected to. If it doesn't take them out first time, look again, they've been touched and they slowly die.

This should scare you into investing into a reliably built PSU, never something that is no name, generic or subpar in build quality. It saves your wallet in the long run.

 

[InvalidError]

Small devices powered directly from the PSU are more susceptible to PSU issues since they have much smaller SMD caps than what is on motherboards and GPUs and smaller caps can't absorb as much junk from the PSU before enough of it goes through to cause problems, so it makes sense that small things tend to die first.

As for how (un)damaged the rest of components might be, only time will tell.