Between roughly 2010 and 2018, extremely cheap power supplies from brands such as Raidmax, Apevia, and Logisys seemed to have astonishingly high failure rates. Discount bundles made them common, and builders often saw people return two or three dead units before finally buying something better—often an entry-level Corsair model. Bad power supplies still exist, but the near-constant stream of completely dead units seems less common today. What caused that period? Was it counterfeit or defective components, poor manufacturing, unusually aggressive cost-cutting, or something else? Were there lawsuits, companies going out of business, or any major industry changes?
3 Answers
A big part of the explanation is probably the combination of cheap designs and questionable components. Low-end power supplies were often built by a small number of original manufacturers and sold under many different brand names. The brands competed almost entirely on price, so they cut corners on capacitors, protections, soldering, cooling, and testing. A unit could pass a quick factory check and still fail soon afterward, especially once heat and electrical stress exposed the weaknesses.
Defective capacitor chemistry was another known source of widespread hardware failures. The capacitor problems that affected electronics in the 2000s were especially damaging in power supplies because they contain large, heavily stressed capacitors. Poor seals, counterfeit parts, or components that were already out of specification could work initially and then fail as they dried out or overheated. Failed capacitors could also damage other components, making a cheap unit appear to fail catastrophically.
The capacitor problems were not limited to power supplies either. Motherboards and other electronics had similar failure waves, so people often blamed the processor or platform when the real issue was the capacitors.
The market was simply flooded with more no-name and rebadged power supplies back then. Online retailers frequently used them in aggressive combo deals, and buyers often judged a unit by the wattage printed on the box rather than by its actual design or safety protections. Reputable models cost more, so many people went through the same cycle of buying a cheap replacement, having it die, and repeating the process before paying for a decent unit. The reduction in these listings today is likely a mix of better buyer awareness, stricter retailer expectations, and cheap brands disappearing or being replaced by different labels—not necessarily one dramatic lawsuit or single event.
There have always been bad power supplies, but that period made them unusually visible because so many bargain models were sold in high volume. A few bad brands going away would not by itself explain everything; the broader supply chain and pricing incentives mattered more.
That also explains why the same failure pattern showed up under several different names. The label changed, but the underlying platform and factory often did not.