Computer Science

OK, I'm posing this question in here because I believe it's a bit beyond the typical troubleshooter's ability. It *is* a problem, but not one that one can't workaround per se. I'm more just curious. I had a platinum rated 850 watt PSU. I had it out in the open. I spilled water on it (just it, no other components): bang pop smoke. PSU is shot. I buy new PSU (holy crap amazon same day'ed it!), everything works. Stability, gpu/cpu/nvme/sata tests, virtualization, all that jazz. Linux, Windows, all of it works. The only thing that doesn't work is *specifically Linux live usb sticks*. I cannot for the life of me boot into *any* distribution of Linux on a live usb stick (yes i've tried all the slots and bought brand new sticks and all). It seems to hang when it comes to the initramfs. Windows USB stick, though? No problem. Can someone hypothesize why it is behaving in this fashion? Thanks to anyone who humors me.

Again, I am NOT asking for a fix. I just want to know *why* it is possibly behaving this way.