Something just exploded

[Salmonella]

Actually it's extremely easy. You just take the thing apart and note the values of the capacitors, then you take them out and put new ones in their place. The only thing you can fuck up is the polarity, but if you just take the time that can't happen.

But yeah it's really not worth it considering it's just a piece of shit PSU. It's nice to do on a Corsair or something that was once expensive and which warranty has expired.

[Janar]

Personally, power supply is one place where I don't save up too much. I'm not risking buying a cheap PSU, which might kill my PC (rather expensive one) just one day.
Corsair RM series might be in your budget, AX probably too far (and stick way from CX series. Just don't buy it). EVGA is definitely a high-quality one.

[Luke]

To be honest, look at it this way.

You pay for all brilliant parts for a high-end system but let it down with a tesco-value PSU, in which that PSU can turn around and fuck you in the ass in the future, if it does indeed blow, it will take 95% of the components with it. A power supply is not something you should not worry about because "a cheaper one does the same job" you pay for the hardware to know that it is reliable and hand on heart I was in the same boat as you, then mine started smelling like fire, same one you have. I was on TS with Trane and some others at the time, and I tell you what I hit that cable quicker then anything, because it can pretty much fry everything, I've seen people with fried GPU's, Motherboards. Not being funny also cheap and cheerful power supplies don't have limiters also, meaning that the power sent to components is not limited per component so it can also "overpower" components on your PC causing them to fry. Don't be silly be smart. A power supply is not something you want to mess with, because spending the extra £20-30 now, will save you having to spend £400-500 in the future to replace fried components.

Just a little experience. 

[Salmonella]

Friend of mine had a Corsair AX860i, one of the most expensive PSUs on the market that failed him after a year and he didn't do any crazy stuff with it or anything. Not all expensive PSUs are necessarily great, and even the good ones can sometimes fail.

This is true for all ''high end'' PC components. ''gamergrade, extreme, military grade'', it's all marketing. ''High quality Japanese capacitors!'' makes me laugh too. It's all stuff they get from mass-purchases and given the unstable nature of capacitors in general, it's impossible to really guarantee a certain lifespan.

That's just one example of why that stuff really means nothing.

Also, blue or red heatsinks don't cool any better than non-painted ones. 

[brian1996]

Friend of mine had a Corsair AX860i, one of the most expensive PSUs on the market that failed him after a year and he didn't do any crazy stuff with it or anything.

There's a reason why those PSUs (in this case that exact model which I have too) come with a warranty of 7 years. They are so confident in their hardware that they hand out such long warranties, ofcourse there's always that 1% that doesn't meet quality standards and your friend just happend to draw the short straw, it was a 1 out of 100 fluke.

[Salmonella]

There's a reason why those PSUs (in this case that exact model which I have too) come with a warranty of 7 years. They are so confident in their hardware that they hand out such long warranties, ofcourse there's always that 1% that doesn't meet quality standards and your friend just happend to draw the short straw, it was a 1 out of 100 fluke.

Except Corsair was a total bitch about the warranty. It took 3 months to review alone. 1% still seems too much for me for something priced at that. Nothing can justify such a short lifespan.

[Mikal]

Just changed my PSU over to the new one now, computer seems normal except for the fact that it's EXTREMELY SLOW, don't know wether it was always like that and I just never noticed, I have been on an 'office computer' lately which was empty and so ran a bit faster, deleting a ton of old shite will speed it up right?

[Erion.]

Yeah, if you have windows 7 i can help you to speed it up with few things.

[brian1996]

Just changed my PSU over to the new one now, computer seems normal except for the fact that it's EXTREMELY SLOW, don't know wether it was always like that and I just never noticed, I have been on an 'office computer' lately which was empty and so ran a bit faster, deleting a ton of old shite will speed it up right?

I'm pretty sure some of your components got screwed. What are the specs anyway?

[Mikal]

I'm pretty sure some of your components got screwed. What are the specs anyway?

Nah, it's running perfect now that it's warm, and I've cleaned ALOT of stuff off of it.

Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit
AMD FX(tm)-4100 Quad Core Processor 4.00GHz
GTX 650 GPU
16GB RAM

Does anyone have any idea what's taking up so much memory? I've done a clean, checked in 'Programs' tab and the biggest thing I have installed is something called "Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2015" at 5GB, don't even know what it is but that's the biggest thing installed, not sure where the rest of the memory is going, I don't have that much pictures, videos or music either.

[Janar]

Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2015 is a collection of development tools, mainly for building new Windows applications. If you haven't used it, feel free to uninstall it.

For getting a slight overview of the component status, try doing some benchmarks on CPU, RAM and GPU. Should it be lower than other same devices (check others' results), it could be something got damaged by the PSU failure.

As for HDD usage, you gotta take a look at your files etc. Could be duplicates of some folders or other old stuff eating up space.

[Mikal]

Thanks Janar, think I have Microsoft Visual Studio from using Unity and Unreal Engine, as for the HDD usage, found a windows.old folder, that seems to be the memory hog.

[Janar]

You probably did upgrade to Windows 10, hence the Windows.old folder. Just delete it, it's a leftover from previous Windows installation.

[Mikal]

You probably did upgrade to Windows 10, hence the Windows.old folder. Just delete it, it's a leftover from previous Windows installation.

Haha, haven't upgraded to Windows 10, I hear it sucks, I guess it's from one of the times I reinstalled Windows 7.

[Janar]

Haha, haven't upgraded to Windows 10, I hear it sucks, I guess it's from one of the times I reinstalled Windows 7.

Most likely that. Either way, you can remove it.
On a side note - I have been using Windows 10 on all my PCs, love it.