The Sound of Silence

Yesterday morning I came down, went to my desk, and was met by the sound of silence. My PC had shut down during the night. This had happened once or twice before, so I wasn't worried too much, I was merely wondering which application could have crashed so bad it took Windows with it. To turn it back on, I pressed the power button. I pressed it again. I tried the reset button (after all, I didn't have the case for too long and have actually turned it on only twice before). Pressing the reset button had the same effect as pressing the power button.
I then went on to check the power supply. Yes, it was plugged in and turned on. After turning off and on the power supply, it made a high pitched whining noise. So, did I have a dead power supply, or a short circuit on my main board?

Since I was requisitioned by my mother to bring some stuff to the recycling center that day, I spent the better part of saturday morning wondering what happened to my computer and which parts could have broken down. I sincerely hoped it was the power supply, since that's the only part of which I have plenty spare ones. But even if the psu broke down, did it produce a wreaking voltage peak frying my main board or other electronics before failing, or did it die peacefully?

When finally I had the time to look into the matter, I immediately switched my two-year-old Hiper 580W power supply with my old AOpen 350W one (boxed with my previous case) and things worked perfectly.
I originally bought the Hiper when reaching 7 hard disks; I thought the 350W one was nearing its limits with all those disks. However, I am now running 8 disks from that same old AOpen psu and things work just fine.
I'll never buy a Hiper again! If they make a habit of failing after only two years of running nowhere in the least near their maximum capacity, they are just an expensive joke in which I will not have any part again.