Power supply failures are the #1 issue on ALL computer systems. 90% of power supplies are crap. The other 10% fail before the warranty expires about 30% of the time. Age, quality of the unit and using a unit that does not TRULY meet the capacity requirements, thus stressing the unit beyond what it was designed to handle, are the main reasons. Factor in the fact that all mass produced electronics suffer from some percentage of simply having a manufacturing defect, and the additional possibility of surges, brown outs or poor electrical grids as well as the use of incompatible UPS unit waveform outputs and cheap power strips, and that's a LOT of different ways the power supply can be at fault.
GPU cards are also known to spike out of specifications at times, which further creates potential for damage to the power supply.
The question should never be "how would a PSU problem occur", but instead should be "how do I eliminate the PSU as possibly being the problem". In most cases, "get a quality unit" is the correct answer. While motherboard failures do occur, especially on aging units, they are nowhere near as common as power supply failures except when also paired with a faulty power supply that has in fact been the cause of the failed motherboard. That is more common than it is uncommon.
Nobody ever had a problem with any device, until they did. "But it never gave any signs of failing". Sure it did. You're seeing it now. This does not necessarily mean your unit is at fault, but I would absolutely be looking FIRST at the power supply since it's a low quality unit. I'd also try changing out the SSD SATA cable and if that doesn't help, try connecting it to a different SATA header. You can also run Seatools for Windows on the drive to check drive health. Seatools works for all drives and offers specific tests not found in the Magician toolbox. Run the short DST and the Long generic.
Take a look at your motherboard with a flashlight for any bulging or leaking capacitors. But it's very hard to positively diagnose a motherboard as being faulty until you've pretty much eliminated everything else unless there is visual damage or one of the I/O circuits doesn't work. Failures to POST are also pretty good indicators, although there are many possibilities with no POST symptoms.
This may give us some information:
*How to post images in Tom's hardware forums
Run HWinfo and look at system voltages and other sensor readings.
Monitoring temperatures, core speeds, voltages, clock ratios and other reported sensor data can often help to pick out an issue right off the bat. HWinfo is a good way to get that data and in my experience tends to be more accurate than some of the other utilities available. CPU-Z, GPU-Z and Core Temp all have their uses but HWinfo tends to have it all laid out in a more convenient fashion so you can usually see what one sensor is reporting while looking at another instead of having to flip through various tabs that have specific groupings.
After installation, run the utility and when asked, choose "sensors only". The other window options have some use but in most cases everything you need will be located in the sensors window. If you're taking screenshots to post for troubleshooting, it will most likely require taking three screenshots and scrolling down the sensors window between screenshots in order to capture them all.
*Download HWinfo
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