The Broken

I'm cursed, I tell you.

Electronics, at once the most fun I have with my clothes on and the bane of my tepid existence. So rife with possibilities in all their myriad forms and yet so damning with their ruinous disregard for my desires and well-being.
Eeeeeverything seems to malfunction around me, which is somewhat aggravating when it seems like 90% of my life is lived on the net. Maybe that's just a failing of my priorities. Anyway.

The system downstairs, an ageing and dust-clogged relic, has begun in recent days to sound less like a smooth wireless-serving platform and more like a tractor rending the slow country by-lanes into so much rubble and dust, acrid in the lungs and cloying in the throat. It's not a pretty sound.
Deciding that it's likely a problem with the power supply, I order a new one and a pair of new hard drives for my own little terminal, generous as I am. After installing the new PSU however... yeah, that's not the problem. Bugger.
Ah well, I'll cheer myself up installing these new spacious magnetic discs! Now, SATA ports... yeah, there they are. Now where's my cables...

... cables...

Cables? Hello, SATA cables?

Bugger.
Right, let's hunt through the big box of PC spares and scraps for those spare SATA cables I'm sure I possess... but oh, what's this?

... it's an as-new power supply.

...