Very simple, extra budget setup for a

[sacred surge]

nice to see someone doing basic no fuss particular for a single niche hobby. good on you for not upselling your client something ridiculous.

[real acorn]

It makes me really happy! I think there are so many ways to affordably enjoy PCs when you put your mind to it. And budget doesn't need to mean messy or lazy either!

I had a good time routing these cables behind the panel and tying them up, because as you can see there are plenty of holes to see any potential clutter and the psu is right out in the open

Took a bit of time but was worth it (love that case makers provide plenty of zip ties even for the cheaper cases!)

[sacred surge]

plenty other games you can play on this too. even if youre not a gamer you can keep kid guests entertained.

[real acorn]

Very true! I have another I'll either do tomorrow or Thursday which is a similar setup except a ryzen 5500 and an rgb case (everything else the same).

For a college kid/starter gamer

[distant glen]

Nice build but I’d stay away from those Thermaltake units

[real acorn]

Any reason? They're one of Amazon's highest reviewed psus and all have 5-year warranties.

[sacred surge]

The Smart 80+ (RGB), TR2 non-certified / 80+ White and Litepower (RGB) have known issues with QC or malfunctioning protections.

These guys haven't had too much testing done on them - but initial testing and claims about protections don't suggest theyre very good at running anything beyond an office computer competently under load:

And these are just sorta meh bare miniumum of what you'd expect a PSU to have:

It's mostly to do with protections, and whether theyre even claimed - and if claimed have been tested to pass or not.

Nothing a user will notice day to day. Until they do have a surge in their mains power and the manufacturer claimed OCP measures on their PSU, but actually it doesnt work very well and the system gets fried.

Tierlist: https://cultists.network/140/psu-tier-list/

Doc with relevant sources and tiering metholodogy:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eL0893Ramlwk6E3s3uSvH1_juom7SMG5SCNzP2Uov8w/edit?gid=163389628#gid=163389628

[real acorn]

Well to be fair I'm running an overclocked and undervolted 5500 on 2 PC (1 has a 5600 instead) with a 3060ti overclocked and they're doing great

Only on a 600W white one

[real acorn]

Interesting

[sacred surge]

you wont notice untill you actually need the protections to kick in basically. and the lower tiered ones alarmed enough reviewers to put it there.
and with QC being bad; its entirely possible some models are absolutely fine and will survive any sort of surge.

id read through the actual reviews though and see if you care enough.
like my PSU in my server got tiered lower because it doesnt handle high GPU transients very well - but its not like im using a 4090 with it so I feel fine about that.

[real acorn]

Well shit I guess I'll work through this pile of em until I find their limits

No better way to figure it out then self testing

[sacred surge]

the ammount of reviewers that actually have the 100,000$ machines neccesary to do proper validation is unsurprisingly low. im hoping LTT will provide more info with their labs division. because they did actually buy those machines.

[real acorn]

I hope so too. That'd be nice

[distant glen]

They aren’t rated too well

I had one fail after a year and one still running fine

But I would avoid