So my PC turned off quite unexpectedly this evening preventing me from continuing playing Rocket League. It just turned off and wouldn't turn on again. After confirming a particular smell in the chassis and temporarily replacing it I could make out the PSU as the culprit. It was a 480W beQuiet PSU that I had for aboput 3 years and some and it's actually the very first PC part ever that went kablooy.

To be fair in the past 3 years the hours my PC was not running could be counted on two hands since it's pretty much always on and only reboots if absolutely necessary. There was also an unholy amount of dust in the Chassis which could have something to do with it. But we're not here today to shift blame. We're here to commemorate this brave soldier which lasted thousands of hours.

R.I.P. my PSU.

So what kind of parts have been dying in your computers in the past?

I just had a motherboard that recently DOA'd on me ...

If I had bad luck it would be that part ...

HAHAHA well guess what?
When my consoles break I have to replace THE WHOLE THING
CHECKMATE PC PEASANTS

sorry about the psu :( I have a corsair 600m; it's pretty great (in case you are looking for a new one). and make sure you dust/clean your pc components every now and then. the dust adds up pretty quickly. I put all of my pc parts through the washing machine and dishwasher at least once per month.

Where I come from BeQuiet is pretty much the top dog when it comes to efficiency and reliability. That it was failing was not so much its fault but just running out its life span. You have to consider that my PC is running like 3 times longer or more than the average computer on a given day. I think I can safely say that it was running at least 30000 hours which is 24/7 over a bit more than 3 years.

I will surely replace it ideally with the same model or at least another one from BeQuiet.

I work as an IT director now, been working on PCs (and before that, programming on Atari/Commodore 8 bit) since the 80s. Over that time I've probably fixed, built, upgraded, or otherwise worked on 10-15 thousand systems.

The PSU is definitely the most common part of failure in my experience, primarily because imho it's where most of the OEMs try to save pennies by going with the absolute lowest price source. A customer might walk into best buy and see that a system with 8GB of ram is 'better' than one with 6GB of ram, but the power supply type and brand probably won't be listed, and on average the vast majority of people won't have any idea anyway. Some systems were absolutely notorious for failure such as the mid to late 00s eMachines and HPs that used the infamous 'Bestec' PSUs. In most cases when a PSU dies (say 80%+ of the time), the mainboard and other components are fine. But with those Bestecs, it was super common for them to fry the board along with various other sensitive components.

Closely following the PSU are mechanical hard drives. After that (if the system came with one, which has been rare for a long time), the video card (cheap stock fans and undersized heatsinks on the cheap video cards HP/Dell liked to use meant that heat was often an issue and the caps would bulge/fail too), which was just a little more common than the mobo failing. Then optical drives, then memory, and lastly CPUs.

So : PSU > HDD > Video Card (if any) > motherboard > optical drive (if any) > memory > CPU.

I've only seen a single failed SSD so far out of several hundred, so they seem to be perhaps as reliable as a motherboard or piece of ram.

Seasonic make great PSUs. I've also had good luck with Antec, Delta, Corsair, and Enermax. Choosing the right model for the job and keeping it clean goes a long way.

Sorry to hear that. If you're willing to pay a bit more, try some of the 80+ Platinum SeaSonic or Antec PSUs.

Currently got my eye on a nice Enermax Platimax. I'm a bit limited in my choice since I have very specific requirements for the PSU AND it has to be available at a shop near me today.

So you think that mountain of dust inside the PSU could've played a small role in the failure? Yeah I'm really not a nice PC owner and I rarely if at all clean it. Usually if it gets too dirty I buy a new one. I still think though that more than 30000 hours of runtime is a good number, especially with my lack of care.

I think I may go with an Enermax since it's one of the only models available today for me. Can't afford to have a whole day without my PC so I have to take what's availale.

GPU.
my last Radeon card stopped working all of the sudden and BOOM! it turn blue screen and it say something about memory dumping. It probably becuz i overclocked da heck out of it, lel.
It's all good tho, give me another reason to upgrade it :3.