In hindsight, what was the worst hardware purchase you have ever made?

[KenSr]

A Cendyne external CDRW just before they went out of business. It died 3 weeks later. No chance for RMA. Plus the Mfg. MIR not honered.

 

[biostud]

I paid far to much for a GF2 GTS 32Mb, considered I could have gt a regular GF for half the price.

 

[OverVolt]

Want to hear a really bad story?

I bought my 3.0C for $750 THE DAY they came out, and a P4C-800 for $190 (the only board out that supported 800FSB at the time) which, to this day, has memory problems from a bad memory controller, never got around to replacing the mobo.

I bought my R9800PRO a week after it came out for $380 and overclocked to XT speeds before the XT ever came out was a good buy though.

 

[Davegod]

Refurbished monitor, 3 month warranty. 3 months, 6 days later, thinking what a great buy it is, excellent picture etc. next day, its dead.

Replaced it with a Samsung 757DFX. Surprised StrangerGuy doesnt like his, Iguess with the 757 they fixed the bad stuff that was in the earlier 753 model. my 757dfx is definately one of my better purchases, at the time the res and refresh etc was way better than anything else for the price. No idea what the usb Human Interface Device is for though.

Other than that, done pretty well I guess, at least with everything current. Maybe the 9800pro would be #2 bad choice, since i waited a month for the price to come down, then it came a bit so i bought, not so long later theyre 20% less - and no games came out that i needed it for until far cry. oh well. Still have one of those mentioned 52x creative cdroms, cant even remember when i bought it and doesnt make all that much of a racket.

audigy would have EASILY taken the worst buy spot, but it repented and reedemed itself when i went winXP (the actual reason i went to xp in the first place).

 

[everman]

Bought an alienware pc several years ago. Worked great and all, but I'm sure I could have paid less.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Cawchy87
9600xt

ditto...I bought it earlier this year, around February I think, just so I could get the Half-Life 2 coupon and play Half-Life 2 when it came out.

...when it came out

 

[MDE]

A Thermaltake GF4 heatsink, the thing sounded like a hairdryer and was a complete waste.

 

[Robor]

Take your pick. This was the prices of some hardware during an upgrade long ago...

DX4-100 - $300
16MB EDO RAM - $640
345MB HD - $350
Matrox Millenium 2MB PCI - $250 or something
2X Plextor CD burner - $450

 

[AmigaMan]

Commodore Plus/4. Came out after the Commodore 64 and had built in word processor, spreadsheet and a couple other things. But it couldn't play Commodore 64 games, didn't have hardware sprite support and basically sucked. But it was my first computer and I learned BASIC programming on it. Suppose thats worth something seeing as how I'm a programmer now.

 

[gramboh]

USR 21,600bps Dual Standard modem, I think it cost like $300 USD or something (and I had to trade in a 9600 HST to get it).

 

[Chaotic42]

Antec TruePower 550

 

[GullyFoyle]

Just a month or two ago, spending $15 for an ATX power supply, $15 for a Slot-1 motherboard, and $20 for a bundle of SDRam DIMMs to put together a 2nd PC for experimenting with Linux because it all seemed like such a good deal, then realizing for just a few bucks more I could have put together an Athlon System...

 

[JackJHG]

My 56k modem. I bought cable internet a month later. I R Not so good at planning ahead...

 

[AOE]

pinnicle studio dc10+ capture card. Cost $100, no firewire, no audio, no usb, no support for windows xp. I guess it was in the good ol hi8 days but still

 

[episodic]

Packard Bell Computer for 1000 dollars and some change (included monitor and printer) . . . My first computer . . .

 

[tfinch2]

this thermaltake volcano 11+ heatsink...huge overpriced copper heatsink with a huge fan that sounded like an airplane. i replaced the fan and it's so-so now.

 

[Prototype]

Athlon 1.4 GHz Thunderbird

Thing ran so friggin' hot, needed a high RPM fan to cool it.
I couldn't handle the noise (and I thought the CPU was kinda slow too).

 

[Bonesdad]

wow, no one brought up the K7S5A...I had one...it was actually one of my best purchases though...lasted 4 years and 3 CPU's....got fried by a PSU


Worst purchase....hmmm...probably my first comp...a P133 w/ 1.2 GB hdd....obsolete by the time i got it home...

 

[ponyo]

Millenium Glaciator heatsink. I bought it due to Joe Citarella's recommendation at Overclockers.com. Around $50 of pure crap copper heatsink that cooled no better than cheap $10 heatsink and it was pretty noisy too. What a waste!

 

[goog]

Aside from the overly expensive first computer, a P120 by NEC (remember the "Ready" line) that I had beyond its useful life; I'd say the HP 4X DVD burner for $170 that I've used exactly once.

 

[BurnItDwn]

a Pair of IBM 75GXP 75GB Drives back when they were new and close to $300 each ...
sure my Raid 0 array was really really fast for the time, however, it was also short lived as were the drives.

 

[zephyrprime]

The IBM Ace Modem+Soundcard combo card. This was a very shortlived experiment in using a single DSP for both tasks. It worked miserably.

 

[Corporate Thug]

case w/o 120mm exhaust

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: episodic
Packard Bell Computer for 1000 dollars and some change (included monitor and printer) . . . My first computer . . .

Paid $3200 for mine..but it came with a coupon for Win95 a Pentium running a full 100MHz, I wasn't going to settle for one of those wussy 66 MHz rigs..no sir

 

[Abhi]

Samsung laser printer..... mine gave me trouble as long as i owned it...