Can we talk about ordering a power supply without measuring first

I needed to swap out a dead power supply in an old Dell tower last week. I grabbed one off the shelf at Micro Center without checking if the cables would reach the motherboard header. Ended up three inches short and had to drive back across town to exchange it for a modular unit. Now I always measure the distance from the PSU to the 24-pin connector before I buy anything. Has anyone else made that simple mistake and lost a whole afternoon to it?

3 comments

3 Comments

davis.olivia17d ago

Did you check the cable routing path before you bought it?

young.ryan17d ago

Man, I actually think people overthink cable routing way too much. You can fix ugly cables with velcro ties or a cheap sleeve, and you're probably going to move stuff around anyway once you start building.

olivia_lopez9816d ago

What happens when the case doesn't have good cutouts or clearance in the first place though? Velcro ties don't fix a power supply cable that's too short to reach the motherboard, and sleeves just hide the mess but not the actual routing issues. @davis.olivia has a point about checking the path before buying, because a clean build starts with the case design, not aftermarket fixes.