Most UNsatisfying HW purchase ??

[blodhi74]

Originally posted by: apoppin
The other thread "inspired" me.

I have known to inspire people

my first rig ... packard bell 100 MHZ.... came with win 3x and 16MB ram 1.6 hd .... got a free upgrade to win 95 .... ran like a$$

 

[M16Grenadier]

Radeon 9800SE

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: blodhi74

Originally posted by: apoppin
The other thread "inspired" me.

I have known to inspire people

my first rig ... packard bell 100 MHZ.... came with win 3x and 16MB ram 1.6 hd .... got a free upgrade to win 95 .... ran like a$$

Well, as i was replying to YOUR post, i immediately thought of my 'best and then several 'worsts' automatically came to mind .. . it's fun to brag AND moan . . .

i don't remember anything quite like these threads . . . and besides providing an "outlet", are kinda useful in noticing "trends", good and bad.

thanks for the idea.

 

[blodhi74]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: blodhi74

Originally posted by: apoppin
The other thread "inspired" me.

I have known to inspire people

my first rig ... packard bell 100 MHZ.... came with win 3x and 16MB ram 1.6 hd .... got a free upgrade to win 95 .... ran like a$$

Well, as i was replying to YOUR post, i immediately thought of my 'best and then several 'worsts' automatically came to mind .. . it's fun to brag AND moan . . .

i don't remember anything quite like these threads . . . and besides providing an "outlet", are kinda useful in noticing "trends", good and bad.

thanks for the idea.

yeah ... I was just sitting and i occured to me the time and money I have spent on computers over the years... and how I use it day after day .... damn these forums .... thats how I got the upgrade bug

 

[MichaelD]

Iwill KK266 board; featured the first (and short lived!) version of the KT266 chipset. Shortly thereafter, it was replaced by the KT266A which we all knew and loved.


The KK266 was the FIRST mobo I convinced my then GF to buy so I could build a rig for her. It wouldn't stay powered up for squat; didn't matter what you swapped out. Major POS.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Iwill KK266 board; featured the first (and short lived!) version of the KT266 chipset. Shortly thereafter, it was replaced by the KT266A which we all knew and loved.


The KK266 was the FIRST mobo I convinced my then GF to buy so I could build a rig for her. It wouldn't stay powered up for squat; didn't matter what you swapped out. Major POS.

explains alot then..kk266 is kt133a mobo

I know of 2 that are still running fine

 

[quickford]

I got a Netgear router that had no option to set the DHCP lease to forever, so it would lose the internet every 3 days or so and had to be unplugged and plugged back in to reset the DHCP. I got a Belkin and it's working flawlessly.

Back when I was a n00b I bought a custom-built computer from Ebay and had no end of problems with it. But now, thinking back, I think what caused my problem may have been a corrupted Windows installation caused by Partition Magic. I made the C partition bigger because it was getting full and Windows kept whining about low disk space. I think it was shortly thereafter that I had problems. I replaced everything but the case and the floppy drive and only when I replaced the hard drive with a fresh one did it work again...and I used most of the parts including the hard drive in a second computer I put together. The hard drive formatted fine in the new computer even though it refused to work in the original computer. So, that was more of a Partition Magic thing I think.

 

[hjo3]

A Gigabyte motherboard from eBay. The seller said it was a particular model, but it turned out to be an engineering prototype of that model with a lot of bugs (e.g. onboard sound and LAN disabled, detected anything faster than 1.2 GHz as a Duron 1.2).

 

[slpaulson]

Originally posted by: manko

Originally posted by: cRazYdood
Next would probably be my old 4X Memorex Cd-RW. That thing would mess up a burn if you did ANYTHING to your computer as it was burning. I'd have to sit there and move the mouse just to make sure it didn't go to screensaver while it was burning a cd.

LOL! Maybe CD writers were just bad back in those days.

I later found out it was a rebadged Yamaha, so yeah they probably were just that bad back in the day.
About a year later I got 8x20x Imation (Rebadged Plextor) SCSI CD-R. Yeah it doesn't have RW, but it was awesome after using that pos I had before. It doesn't have any of those fancy burn-proof stuff, but it didn't burn many coasters that weren't my fault. In fact I had it in my main computer until I got my DVD+RW last summer.

 

[BlackAdam]

Either my Antec PlusView1000AMG or my MSI 865PE Neo2-S. The Antec I'm going to have to live with until Chenbro releases the Gaming Bomb II, and the MSI I'm going to have to live with until the thing dies (probably a chitty Chinese capacitor will kill it).

 

[HappyCracker]

Got a Netgear MR814 802.11b router. Worked great for the first nine months, then the thing went South. Not even with wireless in use. I had major overheating problems. When getting a fast download (>300k/s) it would lock up and need to be unplugged to reboot itself. I got sick of it and pulled the top part of the case off. Solved most of the problem aside from the occassional need for unplugging. Then the uplink connector went to pot. I found a C-clamp solved that. It had to get progressively tighter, then it would hit this point where tighening it would do no good and untightening worked. This think looked like a Frankenstein router. It got replaced with a Dell XPSR450 and Linux.

 

[schdaddy]

Nexgen 90MHz CPU & MB
I don't know WTF I was thinking. And of course at the time it seemed like a great deal especially for HS kid w/ little cash.

Oddly, it ran many things faster than my friends Pentium 90 but didn't run Quake worth a sh!t.
So I spent that summer working my ass off for a P150 & MB.

EDIT:
Didn't AMD buy Nexgen right before they designed the K6?

 

[Sonix7]

Although I read reviews & reviews and it seemed fine, the ATi Rage fury maxx was the most POS i ever bought, not talking about the poor driver support and its uncompatibility with winNT, It gave me a lot of headaches because no matter what i did, The PC always hung, freezed...etc.

If I had a fair reason to hate ATI this is the one!!

and the best part, I sold it for about 40 bucks one year ago, here in colombia. I'm evil, ain't I?

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

I once purchased two Samsung drives: one a DVD-CDRW combo, and a regular 52x CDROM. Both died within months. Maybe it's plain bad luck, or maybe Samsung has got to be the least reliable manufacturer I've ever encountered (except perhaps for their monitors.... they were quite big TV makers anyway). Suffice to say I'll never take Samsucks for any of my PC hardware anymore. Maybe I'm being rash, but I guess first impressions matter the most...

 

[renierh]

Originally posted by: manko

Anyway, looking back, I know there's no way I could've done worse with a cheaper IDE drive (and without the pricey Adaptec SCSI card).

same here, exept i also bought the plextor scsi cd-rom, because that combo would supposedly NEVER give any toasters, and i was told it was the only way you could use discdupe to copy..

anyway, i had the expensive asus scsi mainboard, the expensive writer AND the expensive cd-rom, and i never ever benefitted from it as far as i could tell. this was back in '97 by the way.


have a IDE NEC ND-2510A now. i think i prefer it.

 

[RanDum72]

Nexgen 90MHz CPU & MB
I don't know WTF I was thinking. And of course at the time it seemed like a great deal especially for HS kid w/ little cash.

Oddly, it ran many things faster than my friends Pentium 90 but didn't run Quake worth a sh!t.
So I spent that summer working my ass off for a P150 & MB.

EDIT:
Didn't AMD buy Nexgen right before they designed the K6?

AMD did buy NexGen, I think the K6 series were based on NexGen designs. Anyway, I think there were some versions of the NexGen CPU that didn't have an FPU; thats why its so lousy at gaming and its a trait that was inherited by the AMD K6-series. Although the K6 series had an FPU, they were weak compared to Intel's.

 

[Danzilla]

ECS motherboard from Fry's combo. It kinda worked, making it just barely not worth the effort of dealing with getting it RMA's. POS. Problems with CMOS clearing occasionally but main problem was that most of the time it wouldn't boot on powerup. Needed to let it warm up a few seconds and then hit the reset button to get it to start. Gave it to my brother.

 

[Danzilla]

Originally posted by: manko

Originally posted by: cRazYdood
Next would probably be my old 4X Memorex Cd-RW. That thing would mess up a burn if you did ANYTHING to your computer as it was burning. I'd have to sit there and move the mouse just to make sure it didn't go to screensaver while it was burning a cd.

LOL! Maybe CD writers were just bad back in those days.

Seriously. Anyone that had a CD-RW back then had coasters if you weren't careful. Smart people just changed the screensaver settings to > max burn time. Then just start the burn and take a nap for 30min. Ah yeah, my Acer 2x2x6 for $200.

Originally posted by: twsmit

Corsair PC3200LL. I got it expecting to move up to a 200mhz FSB, only to find out my revision 1.04 NF2 couldnt even break 190FSB. Sorta of a total waste of money.. grrr

???

You bought memory that your MB doesn't support and you're upset? Get a clue.

 

[Afro000Dude]

ECS P4VXASD2+ motherboard from a computer show a couple years ago. Bought it along with a P4 1.6A. This was in the early days of P4 and DDR compatibility, so it had both DDR and SDRAM slots. I didn't want to buy it, having seen better prices on processors online, but my dad was more of the mindset "we came here, so you have to buy something." I didn't have DDR at the time, (but would have if I purchased cheaper parts online), so I had to use the slow-ass SDRAM for a few months, and then when I tried DDR, it didn't even work. Not to mention the 10 jumpers that had to be set to switch from DDR to SDRAM functionality, conveniently placed right between the DIMM sockets and the IDE connectors. I hated that board with a passion. :| :| The 1.6A, however, is still running happily in a new motherboard at 2.1 GHz after all these years.

 

[weeber]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Iwill KK266 board; featured the first (and short lived!) version of the KT266 chipset. Shortly thereafter, it was replaced by the KT266A which we all knew and loved.


The KK266 was the FIRST mobo I convinced my then GF to buy so I could build a rig for her. It wouldn't stay powered up for squat; didn't matter what you swapped out. Major POS.

explains alot then..kk266 is kt133a mobo

I know of 2 that are still running fine

Well you can add another to that list. I just gave my brother my KK266 because it was much more stable than his Gigabyte board. I loved the KK266 when I had it, and yes it's the KT133A chipset.

As for my HW mistakes, I think it was talking my father into getting a PD drive (phase change) instead of one of the early CD writers. At the time CD-RW didn't exist, and I liked the rewrite capabilities of the PD drive, but it really was dead-end technology.

Also, even though I tried to talk him out of it, my Dad bought a Rage Fury Maxx. What a waste.

 

[Whizzy]

Voodoo Banshee card... hot as hell and unstable drivers... what a piece of junk...

 

[LED]

Originally posted by: apoppin
The other thread "inspired" me.

What did you buy - thinking it would be a "good deal" and/or useful - that turned out to be the WORST HW purchase - EVER?

Mine was a SOYO TISU - that replaced my best HW purchase ever (a BX6-r.2). It turned out to be defective right out of the Box (for e.g. the video card needed to be jiggled in the AGP slot to make it work) and Soyo "tech support" so stupid, i gave up and broke it into a million pieces.



What was yours?

Hmmm should we start 1 thread of the most unimpressive piece?...as mine was (no I won't mention her) was the damn SBLive card that I got n left my ISA Creative with added RAM for !

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: JackHawksmoor
-Asus/VIA motherboard with a first-gen chipset for the Thunderbird. I spent a good 6 months patching and flashing that board, and it was never 100% stable. I finally trashed it and bought a P3 and an Intel board. (That experience has scared me away from AMD to this day).

-TWO IBM 75whatever drives. I used to SWEAR by IBM drives until this model. I thought people were such suckers to buy Western Digital or Maxtor and then I had TWO of these die on me within a week of each other. IBM sold thier drive devision after that fiasco...

-a $300 Voodoo 1 card. There was nothing wrong with it, but no way in heck did I get $300 usage out of it.

-a $400 64MB Geforce 2. Total rip-off price-wise. Of course I'm planning on buying a $400 Geforce 6800 GT as soon as I can, so apperently I never learn

I still have the board you are talking about on my desk at work, (A7Pro, same as A7V and Tbird 900) and it is one of the most stable systems in the entire building here where I work! but I guess I am lucky

 

[Regs]

My GFMX 4. This was around the time I discovered higher resolutions other than 1024x768.

 

[crimson117]

A 200 mb IBM hard drive off ebay or somewhere for $40, back in '96 or '97. DOA, and too naive to RMA