What are the brands you would stay away from?
- Thread starter lolzorz
- Start date
Below is my list of "don't buy". I've included reasons for each one because the fact that I wouldn't buy from them does not automatically make the brand universally poor.
OCZ - Quality is all over the place. Really have to dig into the reviews to see where each component stands. Some decent, some not so much, nothing really "great".
Thermaltake - Same deal as OCZ. Not inherently bad, just too hit and miss for my liking.
HP - Their enterprise offerings could withstand a nuclear blast. Their consumer offerings can't even withstand minor changes in air pressure.
Toshiba - Decent products for the price, but they generally don't make an impression on me.
Acer - Same deal as HP, but worse.
Biostar - Cheap chinese garbage
EVGA - EVGA Graphics cards are generally pretty good, but not always outstanding. Everything else is a total toss up from a quality standpoint and generally overpriced. There's almost always something better offered by someone else for the same price. Their warranties do kick ass though.
ASRock - ASRock is a spinoff from Asus meant to compete with budget manufacturers. They do tend to be on the upper end of budget in terms of quality. There's nothing wrong with ASRock at all, I'm just not a budget shopper.
Below is my list of "do buy".
Asus - They have the best motherboards, no contest. Their other offerings are generally pretty good too. Seriously, when I go shopping for a motherboard I don't even look at other vendors anymore.
MSI - My personal experience with MSI is limited but they've been making some serious inroads in the enthusiast markets recently and have been bringing some serious competition to markets historically dominated by Asus, EVGA, and Gigabyte.
Corsair - Does this really need any explanation? They have some of the most recommended memory modules and power supplies around, the best case fans, and now the best cases.
Mushkin - Corsair quality memory for half the price.
Kingston - Some of the highest quality memory available to consumers. Manufactures ECC RDIMMs as well.
Samsung - Crowd favorite for non-volatile memory. The Samsung 800 series SSDs kick ass.
Sony - Comparable to Samsung. Their laptops are rather nice for the price.
Seasonic - They offer the most reliable power supplies available and manufacture PSUs for Corsair and XFX.
Enermax - a PSU manufacturer in line with Seasonic. A solid substitute where a Seasonic PSU is not an option.
XFX - SeaSonic PSUs + good quality graphics cards with great, transferable warranties.
Antec - High quality, affordable cases. The build is generally conservative (a departure from some of the silly designs out there) and of higher quality than most competitors excluding the premium ones from Corsair.
Swiftech - One of the few manufacturers to actually offer an entire suite of watercooling products
Logitech - My keyboard has a monitor on it, your argument is invalid. Also, my mouse is comfortable and actually looks like a mouse.
Dell - Their bottom end products are mediocre at best but their enthusiast, business, and enterprise offerings are generally of very good quality.
Lenovo - Great business laptops for a very good price.
OCZ - Quality is all over the place. Really have to dig into the reviews to see where each component stands. Some decent, some not so much, nothing really "great".
Thermaltake - Same deal as OCZ. Not inherently bad, just too hit and miss for my liking.
HP - Their enterprise offerings could withstand a nuclear blast. Their consumer offerings can't even withstand minor changes in air pressure.
Toshiba - Decent products for the price, but they generally don't make an impression on me.
Acer - Same deal as HP, but worse.
Biostar - Cheap chinese garbage
EVGA - EVGA Graphics cards are generally pretty good, but not always outstanding. Everything else is a total toss up from a quality standpoint and generally overpriced. There's almost always something better offered by someone else for the same price. Their warranties do kick ass though.
ASRock - ASRock is a spinoff from Asus meant to compete with budget manufacturers. They do tend to be on the upper end of budget in terms of quality. There's nothing wrong with ASRock at all, I'm just not a budget shopper.
Below is my list of "do buy".
Asus - They have the best motherboards, no contest. Their other offerings are generally pretty good too. Seriously, when I go shopping for a motherboard I don't even look at other vendors anymore.
MSI - My personal experience with MSI is limited but they've been making some serious inroads in the enthusiast markets recently and have been bringing some serious competition to markets historically dominated by Asus, EVGA, and Gigabyte.
Corsair - Does this really need any explanation? They have some of the most recommended memory modules and power supplies around, the best case fans, and now the best cases.
Mushkin - Corsair quality memory for half the price.
Kingston - Some of the highest quality memory available to consumers. Manufactures ECC RDIMMs as well.
Samsung - Crowd favorite for non-volatile memory. The Samsung 800 series SSDs kick ass.
Sony - Comparable to Samsung. Their laptops are rather nice for the price.
Seasonic - They offer the most reliable power supplies available and manufacture PSUs for Corsair and XFX.
Enermax - a PSU manufacturer in line with Seasonic. A solid substitute where a Seasonic PSU is not an option.
XFX - SeaSonic PSUs + good quality graphics cards with great, transferable warranties.
Antec - High quality, affordable cases. The build is generally conservative (a departure from some of the silly designs out there) and of higher quality than most competitors excluding the premium ones from Corsair.
Swiftech - One of the few manufacturers to actually offer an entire suite of watercooling products
Logitech - My keyboard has a monitor on it, your argument is invalid. Also, my mouse is comfortable and actually looks like a mouse.
Dell - Their bottom end products are mediocre at best but their enthusiast, business, and enterprise offerings are generally of very good quality.
Lenovo - Great business laptops for a very good price.
smeezekitty
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- Sep 11, 2012
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I am going to disagree with some of the above list.
EVGA: Definitely good buy for NVidia GPUS
Asrock: Makes a good budget board
As for don't buy:
MSI has dodgy quality
Almost any PSU that is not well known as good
Acer - had a laptop that overheated like crazy
Ones you need to be cautious of but usually ok:
OCZ
XFX GPUs
Coolermaster
EVGA: Definitely good buy for NVidia GPUS
Asrock: Makes a good budget board
As for don't buy:
MSI has dodgy quality
Almost any PSU that is not well known as good
Acer - had a laptop that overheated like crazy
Ones you need to be cautious of but usually ok:
OCZ
XFX GPUs
Coolermaster
- Jun 13, 2013
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- 10,690
Wow you've had some experience there. Very surprised to see evga and asrock up there in the dont buy section even though I see lots of people praise evga for their products. Also learned about some new stuff, never would have guessed that seasonic is the king of PSUs, and that the other companies owe their psu success to seasonic.
There's nothing wrong with most EVGA GPUs (aside from their watercooled ones which are simply poorly designed and far too heavy) but there are often problems with their other products. Their motherboards are often prone to failure and plagued with firmware issues, and their recent foray into PSUs resulted in their being made the laughing stock of [H]ardOCP. I'd be more forgiving if they were a budget manufacturer trying to compete on price, but they're trying to compete based on features and leveraging brand equity instead. The reason I avoid them is because for the exact same price I can get a motherboard from Asus, or a PSU from Seasonic. I would consider buying a GPU from EVGA but not much else.
I stopped purchasing EVGA products after my EVGA graphics card would not fit into my EVGA motherboard because the backplate came into contact with a capacitor.
It's the same deal with ASRock. There's nothing wrong with ASRock motherboards at their price point, I just don't like budget products. Rather I prefer to purchase or recommend low end Asus motherboards which have a much higher build quality for only a few dollars more (although they may lack some features).
smeezekitty
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- Sep 11, 2012
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I always tend to buy budget because of having not much money.
That is what makes Asrock attractive.
I agree stay away from EVGA motherboards/PSUs.
That is what makes Asrock attractive.
I agree stay away from EVGA motherboards/PSUs.
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