A buddy of mine ordered a seasonic psu from a Chinese seller on Newegg and the power cord melted he caught it before it did any damage thankfully.
The one that came with my EVGA felt like it was made out of the cheapest plastic money can buy.
Most of the big PSU brands sell supply models with "universal", auto-adjusting input voltage support. This then involves one design, one manufacturing process and one
almost identical model number. The only difference is the power cord the PSU comes with - depending on the country/global region the supply will be sold in. The packaging will typically be printed with country/region specific text too.
And this is actually very smart as it means much less expense for logistics (parts inventory, design, warehousing etc.). And typically, the included power cord is more than adequate for the job.
There are exceptions, of course. These cords are mass produced by the 10s of 1000s, perhaps millions and NO WAY is each tested for quality control. This level of production means each power cord might have cost $0.25 to make. Okay, maybe $0.50 for the better ones, but cheap, regardless. But still, typically, if the supply is packaged and marketed for the US or the UK, for examples, and incudes applicable power cables for the US or UK respectively, those cables are typically well made - or at least, not junk.
The big problem comes with these HUGE on-line retailers that sell on the global market. Note, I've seen this with monitors too. eBay, Amazon, Alibaba or Newegg buys 100,000 Seasonic PSUs from Seasonic. These PSUs may originally be marketed for Germany, for example. But a Canadian customer buys it so Alibaba throws in an "aftermarket" Canadian power cable. Only this cable cost $0.15 to make, or even less!
And this one is cheap in every definition of the word, "cheap" (
$0.21 each when buying >5000). Interesting how they call that a 220VAC cable - clearly it is not.
So yeah, I always feel the plugs at the outlet with new power cables. Even the better cables are cheap, barely adequate for the demand, and likely never tested for quality assurance or regulation compliance. Heck - they may even sport counterfeit UL, CE, etc. certification labels.
Anyway, I too have been reusing power cords from older equipment - not just because they obviously are more robust, but also because they tend to be more flexible. That is, the insulation appears to have more soft, flexible rubber in it than those cheap, rigid, plastic-insulation $0.21 cables that have been folded and pressed into the smallest compact size possible - makes me wonder why they even bother to tie-wrap it.
