Oh man, that sounds bad! Thanks for the advice, I've been a fan of Thermaltake and Antec for years. When I was in college, I used to have my PC in my grandma's now-demolished, 40+ year old house with the two prong plugs. The water table was full of iron, there was little to no grounding on the house's internals, and I literally had a wall outlet explode in my face once. The Antec PSU still drives my XP rig.

The NZXT Hale90 series are rebadged Superflower units, and are pretty universally considered to be high quality PSUs. Of course there are inevitably going to be dud units, and it sucks that you got one, but... meh, it happens.

Crappy support from NZXT doesn't surprise me a bit, though. I think Corsair and Seasonic are about the only ones left amongst the PSU brands that have generally good customer support. Most of the 'enthusiast' brands have such awful customer service that I don't even bother trying to RMA anymore, it's quicker and easier (and if shipping charges are involved, cheaper) to fix the damn thing myself, or just replace it outright.

Oh, and just a side note... some of those inductors do use a dark color insulation. I wouldn't necessarily assume the color is indicative of anything, unless it's obviously scorched or something.

I usually go with Seasonic, Corsair, or antec. I've had good luck with them. I recently opened up a cheap Excellent XPower 300 WATT thats been in use for a decade in a workstation, and it has 5 bulging caps. good thing I took it out of service before things went boom! I dont know how it lasted as long as it did, it came with the case which is even cheaper than the PSU itself.