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It's easy to dunk on LTT but they came back pretty strong after the controversy. It seems like marketing got the shaft and the engineers are way more free to spend time on their stuff.
LTT is one of the only ones that cuts the over spec PSU and Mobo bullshit when doing PC builds, when others are wasting all the budget on non gaming stuff.
Linus is VERY technically informed these days.
I've been building "over spec" since RTX 20XX came out because they keep tripping even platinum PSUs from good brands. I have seen it with 30XX and 40XX GPUs too. This doesn't usually show up in test loads because they have a consistent load, it's the intermittent gaming loads that cause transient spikes. Some new PSUs are built to take the spikes but many are not.
I'll never not overspend on a PSU. I've always looked at it as: every time I turn on my PC there's a chance it'll explode. Why increase that chance to save $100?
Because a more expensive PSU does not mean a better one. The efficiency ratings also don't tell the whole story as power supplies are more complicated than their power efficiency. Use one of the many power supply tier lists to ensure you get a good, reliable PSU. I've seen some very expensive ones be absolutely awful.
More expensive does not mean safer, it can be quite the opposite.
Doesn't help that places like the ltt tier list had PSUs like the entire Evga B3 series which several exploded when tested by tomshardware as BETTER than the N1 series which were crap according to it when that PSU passed jonnygurus testing without issues. Why you wonder? Well because the N1 is an older topology lol.
I've noticed that now PSU reviews have turned into sort of a audiophile nonsense competition where people are only interested in better numbers without knowing what they actually mean and when they matter, last time I watched gamer nexus I cringed very badly when someone in their team mentioned in a vid that a low power factor could cause you stability issues wtf. (that is like saying that a high input lag will cause your pc to crash).
I guess I should clarify what I meant, since you're the second person to point this out to me (no fault to you, I wasn't clear).
I'll always pay for high quality in a PSU, even for non-critical systems. My main PC, home server, and shit box emulator machine on integrated graphics app run the same PSU, only the main PC is a higher wattage.
An old friend bought an RGB PSU in like 2018 despite my best advice. I wonder how it's holding up.. bought the first of my three PSUs two years prior to that and still pushing electrons like new
That's great but you are not decreasing the chance of the PSU exploding by spending more on it.
You're right, the PSU doesn't care how much money I spent on it.
But a shitty $50 no name PSU is probably gonna blow up before the $150 unit from a solid company with a well established history of quality parts
I'm not saying more expensive PSUs are better, I'm saying that better PSUs tend to be more expensive. Obviously that exploding PSU from a few years ago isn't better than a cheaper one simply because it cost more.
Never thought "I buy good stuff i have confidence won't blow up" would be such a controversial take
Nope haha, I don't know if you know, but Evga, Corsair and Gigabyte already had their issues with entire series of PSUs exploding, all those had the issue that the active pfc diode/transistor were failing.
You will never have that issue if you buy a very low end PSU that is NRTL certified (plenty of sub 40 usd PSUs do) because they don't have active pfc to begin with.
At most maybe the more expensive PSU because it has better quality capacitors will last longer before the PSU will eventually refuse to turn on due to the caps degrading, but at no point it will explode.
But the transistors, resistors, diodes, etc are all the same quality, there isn't a quality difference in those.
They are also "better" in the sense that they usually have less ripple and better regulation than their cheaper counterparts, but that does not make them safer, in fact it is the opposite:
High end PSUs have DC-DC regulation, that is the 5V is taken from the 12V instead of it being its own output from the transformer winding, you have to hope that they implemented the supersivor IC right in these PSUs, because in DC-DC PSUs there is the posibility of a 5V failure resulting in 12V in the 5V rail if the 5V regulator fails. With cheap group regulated PSUs this isn't possible because all regulation is done from the primary transistors and if anything fails the output voltages will just drop to 0V.