Hardware to avoid

[Parge]

OK, dont know if this will work:

Heres a thread to list stuff you have bought, only to find its performance is severly lacklustre, help others avoid this crap:

I will start - Logic 3 soundstation 5.1 (and Logic 3 speakers in general)

AWEFUL SOUND QUALITY, retro (horrid) looks, dont even think about buying this unless you get it in Poundland

 

[ikjadoon]

6800XT.

FX5200. (EDIT: Make that "FX Series")

~Ibrahim~

 

[toasty2]

SLI, just get one card....do you REALLY need those 200 fps, I doubt you can tell the difference between 90 fps and 200, because I cant.. Unless you do some CRAZY stuff, it's not worth it.

 

[sprite]

6800XT.

FX5200.

~Ibrahim~

You really should add most of the FX range. First GPU i ever bought was FX5600 "Hey it's a higher model number than a GeForce 4Ti800 so must be better!" Oh how wrong i was....

 

[ikjadoon]

Haha, I knew there was going to be a line for that one!

Add to the list:

Case Power Supplies
Dell

~Ibrahim~

 

[Dahak]

You may not be able to tell the difference between 90fps and 200fps,but it sure is nice knowing your machine can run that many fps.also sli does help improve 3dmark scores.I'm not complaing I can assure you.Goodluck.

Dahak

AMD X2-4400+@2.4 S-939
EVGA NF4 SLI MB
2X7800GT IN SLI
2X1GIG DDR IN DC MODE
WD300GIG HD
EXTREME 19IN.MONITOR 1280X1024
ACE 520WATT PSU

 

[ikjadoon]

How does it feel to wake up to two 7800GTs in the morning? Must feel a hell lot better than waking up to a dying Ti 4600!

~Ibrahim~

 

[3lfk1ng]

BFG GeForce fx5200- fan broke, barely ran games
Thermaltake Bigwater -Fried my asus 9800xt after two weeks or use.
White cold cathodes- Take forever to warm up and one of them is brighter than the other.
Cheap PSU- my friends pc shot sparks, it was sick!
Cheap cases- my friends cheap case is covered in dents from just bumbing into it while walking through his door.

 

[Nitro350Z]

HP budget pc's
IBM Harddrives
Ultra brand DDR memory.
MSC routers

These are the products that I can remember off the top of my head, the only one I personally have experience with is the IBM hard drives, had 6 fail on me, and the ones currently in my rig work on the basis that if I dont look at them, they're fine. Also the rear connections are increadibly flimsy

HPs' lower end pcs' should be avoided like the plauge, friends of ours have non stop problems with theirs. I'm not sure if the same applies to their "higher-end" stuff.

Ultra ddr memory is definetly not good, another friend would insist on buying the cheapest ram, againts my recomendations, he went through 4 pairs of memory (he bought dual channel kits) before finnally replacing those with a good pair of corsair memory.

I was once unfortunate enough to buy an msc router, broke after 1 week, had it replaced, the replacement broke after 2 weeks, replaced again and it worked for a good few months, then it started acting weird and wouldnt always allow me to configure it and wouldn't allow me to connect more that 3 computers to it, didnt matter wich ports I tried, just wouldnt allow it. Fortunately it died a few months ago and I was able to replace it with a decent Dlink that I got a great deal on.


Well those are the only things that I can think of off the top of my head.\

HTH

 

[Parge]

oh and all thompson/alcatel speedtouch routers suck bigtime, bad software, bad hardware, they make crap cell phones as well!

 

[mesarectifier]

Well, not that anyone would buy one by choice, but I'd say that those exploding Sony batteries would probably be a piece of hardware best avoided!!!

 

[Dade_0182]

I know this does not need mentioning but someone has to do it. VIA 8O there, I said it.

 

[cherie22984]

dude!
I used the 6800XT for my first build almost a year ago.
Which has the following.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 2.2GHz (@2.5) 1MB L2
Patriot Signature Series 2.5GB (2 x 1GB + 1 x 512MB) DDR 400
MSI K8N Neo4-F Socket 939
Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB
Geforce 6800XT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Ex (@450MHz / 1.15Ghz)
SAMSUNG 16X DVD-R Drive
ViewSonic VX922

I use this Only for BF2 at 1280x1024 on all high settings (maxed)
The card runs this game (never drops below 50fps) with ease 8) . Never goes above 50c!
I have artic cooler , BTW.
I did play other games like CS:S on high settings, Quake4 on Ultra settings
and FEAR on high settings. I Did noticed some slow-down with FEAR, but it was playable :| .
Im very happy with this GPU.
I will upgrade in a few months to DX10 GPU, Quad Core :tongue: CPU (Intel or AMD * dont matter *)

 

[mitch074]

Steer clear away from HP Pavilion laptops - USB ports not following specs, fried DVD burner and real dustbusters (P4 based).

On the other hand, I'm most impressed with a very old piece of hardware:
Asus V3400TNT-TV 16 M (a Nvidia RivaTNT 1 rev 4 -based video card), which still actually works, served me well until the DX8 era (it could run GTA3, can you believe that!), and can actually run a 3d desktop - for those not afraid to wait...

 

[Guest]

Every single product made by pinnacle. Especially the media center.

Worst product I ever had. Anyone argue about that?

 

[atarione]

nec monitors... well at least my FE991SB horrid piece of 19" CRT CRAP.


first off text was always blurry at 85 refresh rate had to set it to 75 or not be able to read text.

2nd after 2yrs DEAD....yes dead.... sitting in the garage as 65~lbs of rubbish... too lazy to goto the recycling place with it.



ummm... kinda moot at this point but 75GXP drives (IBM DEATHSTARS) I got burned by them... as did 4 of my good friends.... terrible hd's


in general as a lot of computer stuff has dropped to commodity pricing (Home netowrking class ROUTERS...i'm looking your direction) they have become very low quality.... and sadly now many of them don't seem to work right at all.

also DVDRW drives... it is great that we can get them for ~$40 off of newegg now...but many of them (Liteon) have just the most flimsy bs excuse for trays / eject motors..

I just replaced a dead tray mechanism Liteon DVDRW w/ a NEC 3550A (crappy CRTs decent optical drives ) it is much sturdy in the tray area.

I had problems w/ kingston hyperX ram... but i'm not sure if it was abits or kingstons fault.... generic ram should be avoided... as flakey ram does not a happy computer exerience make.


I got a bad stick of mushkin DDR in my dual channel kit.... mushkin was most helpful on the phone and got me replacement ram very quickly... sadly the replacement ram had purple heatspreaders rather than black like the defective kit had.

but oh well....


heatsinks with poor instructions and or convoluted mounting procedures can f_ck right off.

cases with windows.....

THEY SEEM LIKE SUCH A GOOD IDEA.... then you realize howmuch dust the get on them...finger prints... plus everyone can see how messy your case wiring job actually is.... bah


spending too much time zip tying every wire in the case just so....... cause you realize the next thing that will happen is you'll get something new or a case fan will die... and you'll have to spend a bunch of time trying to get the wires undone.

case without window...reasonable attempts to keep airflow good then F_ck it...that is the way to go.

 

[Parge]

also DVDRW drives... it is great that we can get them for ~$40 off of newegg now...but many of them (Liteon) have just the most flimsy bs excuse for trays / eject motors..

I just replaced a dead tray mechanism Liteon DVDRW w/ a NEC 3550A (crappy CRTs decent optical drives ) it is much sturdy in the tray area.

I am so with you on that as well! My Liteon Dvd player worked for approximately 2 weeks before the whole thing just made whirring sounds when you put a disc in

 

[Guest]

I also agree to the cheapo DVD problem.

Got a liteon (actually two with the same problem) which actually never really could write DVDs. Sometimes it reads them at least.

 

[ikjadoon]

Samsung makes greats DVD+/-RW burners....

NEC new monitors kick a$$, though..

~Ibrahim~

P.S. Rumours of NEC launching a gaming monitor

 

[enforcerfx]

Dell manufacturing overall: Cooling is completely awful. Did you know that in the Dimension line from Dell, there is only 1 fan in the entire case? And thats the 86mm outtake fan for the CPU. Theres not even one behind the harddrive.

Someone said ultra ram, and i will agree its terrible.

No one mentioned those Dell laptop batteries. :lol:

Saitek Keyboards: Paint rubs off the keys very easily, and a friend of mine bought one, and the spacebar fell off right out of the box. And he bought it in store too.

Dell cheapo All-in-one printers: No wonder why they give them out for free.

And yes, the dreadful 6800xt.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

HP midrange...not too bad-no overclocking tho any and all creative sound cards...tho I own one I know (unfortunately )its the ONLY way to go...

 

[pmr]

sli does help improve 3dmark scores

Who cares?

 

[Howard_Stern]

Floppy drives. I bought two of them, and both were broke. I thought my MB had problems....nope just crappy floppy drives.

 

[nukemaster]

Belkin VGA cables(ghosting like old antena TV)
Linksys WRT54G (lockes up when streaming DVD's or any large files)
Kodak Digicams (total crap compaired to HP)
Ipod (itunes sucks )
Sony LCD's (the worst color/response ever, but the case sure looked nice)
Anything from Ultra
Celerons/P4's (netburst only)
Cisero computers (futureshop....need i say more)
Intel GMA (Makes ET suck)
Mac Pro (Hard drives look alittle close together for good cooling....well everything does)
the list goes on.....
Ohhhh right Geforce FX's

People to avoid
Fanboys!!!!!!(all kinds)
Futureshop reps

 

[Granite3]

Saitek keyboards, returned it twice to replace all the letters and spacebar locking up.

x600 vid card, Horrible performance for the money. x300 was weak, but you knew it. Naming a card the 600 made you think you were getting twice the performance of the 300, but it was about 15% better.

WD 250 Sata 2, 16mb cache, had to RMA brand new one after 2 days, and had to RMA the returned unit which was DOA! Third one is going ok, but not using it as a primary drive. I had GREAT service from their 80 gig Sata units, 3 yrs on 2 units.