Linux Questions

So, I've had the same computer for about 12 years now. Nothing special. A Dell Inspiron 3847. Bought it in 2014, and it's not a gaming PC by any means. No graphics card, just the onboard chip.

Last week, I had been playing Civ6 on it. It was going fine. Well....my game wasn't going fine. I was getting boxed in by both Germany and America. But the PC performance was going just fine.

I generally leave my PC on at all times, and have for the past 12 years. Well, I also have a second sata drive port that I disconnect and reconnect various drives.

After playing a game of Civ, I saved my game, exited to desktop, and wanted to connect my other hard drive as a second drive. So I turned the PC off, connected the drive, and turned the PC back on.

When I do this, normally I see the dell logo appear on screen almost right away. This time I didn't. The screen stayed black, the orange light on the power button looked like it was struggling to keep itself on, and then the whole thing went dead.

I said "That's weird. Never did that before." And so I pushed the power button again. This time, I hear an audible POP inside my computer, and immediately smell fire. So I INSTANTLY yanked my desktop out of the little wooden stand it sits in. No fire, but the whole thing smells like fire.

I disconnect all the cords, and open the side of my case up. I see no damage. I see no fire. After a while I figured out that something inside my power supply literally exploded. I don't know enough about the terms for what would have exploded, but something exploded. For the next 2-3 days, in that room you could still smell burnt plastic. It's a very distinctive smell. The only time I ever experienced that was 20 years ago when a Windows 98 computer actually DID catch fire. That's what I thought happened here. The motherboard of the Windows 98 computer caught fire, and burned the motherboard.

So flash forward to today, and the only thing I see is that my internals are very very dusty. Other than the dust, everything is in good condition.

So, right off the bat, I KNOW I need a new power supply. But I have questions first.

Was it just the age of the power supply that did it in? Or was it me playing Civ6 for 6 hours straight that overloaded it? Should my power supply be a straight replacement? Should I get a more powerful power supply? I also heard that some graphics cards need power from the power supply. Should I buy one of those, in case I want to upgrade later?

This is the power supply I was looking at

Would this be good?

I've never in my life bought a power supply. Usually when I shop for something, I compare multiple products, and make an informed decision.

In this case, I don't even know what I'm looking for in a "good" power supply. I don't know how to measure what's good and what's trash. Is $35 good on a power supply for a computer this old? Should I look for something else?

I've included a pic of the back of the power supply, just so everyone can see what I was originally using.