What's your LEAST reliable component?

[joecool]

I just finished building a new rig and, as I eye the pile of obsolete but still working components while struggling to find an optical drive in the house that can read my original Win XP install disc, and some other install discs I've burned over the years, I realize that optical drives are BY FAR the least reliable PC component I purchase. I have a stack of old IDE hard drives that are still going going strong, but are too small and too slow for my needs and a modern system. Ditto for video cards, sound cards, mem sticks, CPUs, etc. On the other hand it seems like I have to replace my optical drives yearly if not more often as they quickly degrade and lose their ability to handle anything less than perfect media. This is particularly annoying as I have usually bought high end drives from the best manufacturers - LG, HP, Lite-On.

So, I'm curious if this a universal phenomenon due to the way lasers and optics degrade over time, or if I'm just unlucky in my optical drive choices.

Oh, and I could use a recommendation for a decent, CHEAP, SATA optical drive that supports Light Scribe (doesn't have to do Blu-Ray tho).

 

[Davidh373]

It's likely that it's more the disk itself is getting old, and not the drive, but here it is.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-178-_-Product

 

[joecool]

For an embossed disc age shouldn't matter, and while there are a few very small scratches visible on the WinXP disc there is nothing that looks like it should render the disc unreadable. For most of it's life the disc has sat quietly in its original case on my bookshelf.

BTW both of the drives were unable to read several other discs I had recently burned w/a Phillips drive, but could read a rather ancient WinXP install disc I had made w/SP2 in-lined. That I really don't get. The two (apparently) failing drives are a Pioneer and an HP. The HP is barely a year old.

 

[joecool]

Oh, and the Pioneer successfully read the original Win XP install disc earlier this year in my old rig, when I had to reinstall it after the machine got infected w/some virus. Can pron infect an embossed CD? ;-)

 

[crucibelle]

I've had really bad luck with motherboards. They are always the first thing to go in my computers. The one I have now has done quite well, but the ones I've had in the past have all died in a little over a year.

 

[Davidh373]

I've had really bad luck with motherboards. They are always the first thing to go in my computers. The one I have now has done quite well, but the ones I've had in the past have all died in a little over a year.

do you normally get $40 biostars? (sorry, just had to ask )

 

[crucibelle]

David - not Biostars, but Epox, when they were still in business. I think they might have been about as cheap as Biostars, though (not sure).. lol. The one I have now is an Asus and it's been going strong for 4 years.

 

[Davidh373]

Yeah, that would probably do it.

ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, all better brands. I wish you luck with that one .

 

[boran]

I bought a whole load of socket A motherboards that had bad caps. All of em dead now except for one and the caps on that one are bulging too.

The second least reliable component would be 3d cards, I had 3 of em die on me already.

 

[Chapbass]

HDD's by a long shot.

In fact, I don't think I've had a single other component die on me. /knock on wood.

Oh, I did have a monitor die on me.

 

[crucibelle]

I bought a whole load of socket A motherboards that had bad caps. All of em dead now except for one and the caps on that one are bulging too.

That's what killed most of my motherboards in the past.. bad caps.

 

[KGB]

Any computer component with moving parts is less reliable.
This includes HDDs, optical drives, fans on MBs, GPUs, CPUs etc.

BTW, regarding electrolytic caps going/gone bad: replace them yourself.
With a soldering iron, $10 and a few minutes it can be repaired.

 

[biostud]

dvd-drive

 

[crucibelle]

Any computer component with moving parts is less reliable.
This includes HDDs, optical drives, fans on MBs, GPUs, CPUs etc.

BTW, regarding electrolytic caps going/gone bad: replace them yourself.
With a soldering iron, $10 and a few minutes it can be repaired.

I knew it could be done, but I'm way too clumsy to attempt that.. lol

 

[Blain]

My least reliable components are fans.

 

[Blain]

BTW, regarding electrolytic caps going/gone bad: replace them yourself.
With a soldering iron, $10 and a few minutes it can be repaired.

Good solder joints require a little more skill than simply buying a cheap soldering iron and giving it a few minutes.
If someone is experienced with soldering at the component level, sure it takes a few minutes to do the job.

 

[Modelworks]

least reliable would be one of my hard drives. A WD 500GB. I don't trust it for anything I don't have to because the model has a failure rate in the 1 in 5 range

 

[corkyg]

After careful thought, I looked at what component I had replaced more often in the last 10 years. I was surprised a bit - no HDD failures, no optical drive failures, . . . but I replaced three keyboards!

 

[Markey]

After careful thought, I looked at what component I had replaced more often in the last 10 years. I was surprised a bit - no HDD failures, no optical drive failures, . . . but I replaced three keyboards!

The words of an angry man.

just kidding.

I've had the worst luck with DVD drives. I'm at the point now where I store everything on hard drives.

A close second for me is 3D cards. My last 2 both burned up. Which I find strange, because I always leave the cover off my PC and there's plenty of airflow...

 

[woolfe9999]

I've been building rigs for 14 years. So far the most failures have been power supplies, oddly enough. Dust getting in them I think. I've had probably 3 go south on me. Every other component I've had like 1 failure apiece, except the CPU. I don't think CPU's will really go down in less than 5 years unless you accidentlly fry them because the heatsink is detached or something.

- wolf

 

[Athadeus]

I have to say that CPUs are the most unreliable component in all (6) the computers I have bought or made. The first computer I fully built had a Pentium 4 which started flaking out after 30 days, and was practically unusable after about 90 days. I didn't get it figured out for 6 months though, and it is a wonder I ever built again after that mess. I may have made my account on the Anandtech forums to seek help in solving that, though I'm not sure I did ever post about it. The only other thing that ever broke in a computer of mine was that the fan on my 9800 pro fell off about 3 weeks before the 3 year warranty expired

In computers I've worked on (thousands), HDDs are the least reliable, followed distantly by fans and power supplies.

edit: Bah, I forgot about the HP laptop I had which I am pretty sure is dead because of the nvidia graphics chip running too hot for too long and going kaput. I am still slightly tempted to fix it, but I expect it will suffer the same fate again unless I mod the laptop casing which I've never done (I refuse to use a cooling pad).

 

[queequeg99]

My vote is for optical drives. I've had 3-4 go bad out of 6 computers I've owned. Even now, while I have one that generally works in my main desktop, I occasionally pop in disks that it simply won't read. I pop the same disks into my wife's laptop and it reads them without any problems at all.

 

[ScorcherDarkly]

Optical drives and monitors are both high for me. Think I've had 3 of each bite it in the last 7 years or so (1 CRT, 2 LCDs). Only other part I've had break is a graphics card that had 5 caps burst after about a year.

If we include peripherals, friggin ROUTERS are number 1. Think I'm on my 4th in 5 years. Tried Linksys, Cisco, Belkin, currently on a Netgear and it's lasted the longest so far. Not sure if I've just had a run of bad luck or if they're designed to blow out that fast so I have to go buy another one =/.

 

[degibson]

In the past four years, across four operating systems and nine operating drives:
- Two failed hard disks (3 if you count the external HDD, that I dropped)
- Two failed PSUs
- One failed motherboard
- One replaced optical drive (did not 'fail', but was annoying)

My perception is that HDDs are my least reliable component, overall. The PSU failures were pretty much my fault for buying cheapos.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Optical drives. I must burn them out (ha ha ha) with all the discs I make for friends.