00hei :
Okay, so I have bought 3 power supplies now, a Zumax 650W and two Logisys 575W, and all of them have failed. The first never worked, the second worked until I was hosting a Minecraft server and playing ( 1 day after purchase ), and the third lasted a week, but I only ever watched Game of Thrones online. The last two made a buzzing sound while operating which grew louder and more concerning when I used more power (ex: playing games). After all three failed the motherboard power and reset lights remained on, but nothing else received power. Could someone tell me what is going wrong.
Processor: Intel Core i7-3820 LGA 2011 Quad Core
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX660
Hard Drive: Seagate 1 TB internal
I generally think of the case and power supply as a unit -- but I don't buy them that way.
A good case offers more than adequate cooling, room for future expansion, ease of use, and sufficient sturdiness to re-use in one or two future builds. If it looks good and is on the quiet side, those are big pluses. Cheap cases generally fall short on some or all of these requirements.
A good power supply must have both adequate power for both present and future requirements, and enough connections to deal with future expansion. It also has to be reliable, and deliver clean power as it ages. I pay extra for PSUs from brands that have earned reputations for quality, and they generally last through multiple builds over several years.
In over 20 years of dealing with PCs, I have had only two PSUs fail. One was new, from a highly respected company, and replaced under warranty; the other was a cheap unit that came with a used computer I bought -- and it fried the motherboard when it failed.
Unless you are building a cheap computer that isn't mission-critical and can be discarded after a couple of years, pay a little extra and start with good-quality components. A bad case will always be a pain to work with, both during the initial build and whenever you upgrade components. A bad power supply may fail prematurely, taking other components with it. A good PSU usually costs less than either motherboard or CPU, often less than the average hard drive; and compared with cheap no-name units it is far less likely to die an early death, or take other components with it when it goes.
For my latest build I chose a Cooler Master PSU that was rated 80 Plus Bronze, with roughly 20 percent greater capacity than I expect to need even after upgrading and adding components over the next two to three years. I looked at several other good brands, all of which would have worked just as well, and chose the Cooler Master PSU based on slightly lower price (on sale), quiet operation, warranty and availability. I installed it into a case that keeps the PSU's air intake and exhaust separate from the rest of the case, to help keep everything (including the power supply) cool, and which has a filter over the PSU's intake vent. If memory serves, I paid roughly US$75 for the power supply, which I consider cheap insurance for the rest of the parts in my computer. And if/when I rebuild it into a more expensive machine, I expect the PSU to still be working flawlessly, with no appreciable degradation. (If it should fail after five years, that's still just US$15 per year of usage ... not expensive at all.)
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