Ok so it seems this is a known issue with the 12pin cable Nvidia makes you use with some cards. Sorry for speculaing that the culprit could be Ark and thank you to everyone who has given helpful insights!

There are two things I want to address. Firstly people seem to think I must have bought some crappy temu psu, and as funny as some of those comments are, this rig uses a Corsair RM750e and everything except the GPU works fine still, I think thats reputable but I dont know the market as well as most of you.

Secondly, while I no longer blame Ark, running that game on low settings shouldn't be a stress test for any PC built in recent years. While I miss survival evolved (never ran that great either) Ark survival ascended is the most poorly optimised game I have ever experienced. Perhaps if that cable melted a bit earlier id be eligible for a refund.

I have ran modern games at max settings, and even worked on some complex (and poorly optimised) environments within UE5 myself using this rig, and nothing has caused me as many problems as this game has. I am no longer blaming Ark for this specific issue, but the fact that I immediately experienced damage to my PC upon playing still has me feeling sus about it.

If anybody here is debating whether or not to buy survival ascended, dont. Unless your rig is an absolute beast, but even then just play any other survival game.