What's your LEAST reliable component?

[mmntech]

My game console. I think my PS3 is on its last legs, again! Time to skirt Sony and open that mofo up myself.

Knock on wood, I've never had any problems with computer hardware. The only component I ever had fail was the power connector in my old laptop. Was an easy fix with a cheap part.

For me it's usually the OS that goes squirrely. Haven't had hst issue sinve XP SP2 though.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

HDD >>>> PSU > GFX > ODD in order of least reliable.

I've only had 1 MB die on me, and 1 stick of RAM.

 

[Absolution75]

Memory by far as far as DOA products

Then motherboards reguardless - only had a few components actually die (all mb's)

 

[mfenn]

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 =/.

pfSense will change your life.

 

[Fayd]

let's see...

my failures

ram: 3 sticks failed thus far.
video cards: 1 failed thus far.
motherboards: 2 failed thus far.
hard drives: 2 failed thus far.
UPS's: 3 failed thus far.
routers: 1 failed thus far, and 1 not particularly stable.
speakers: 2 failed thus far.
headsets: 4 failed thus far (though i probably deserve some blame here. i'm hard on headsets)
keyboards: 3 failed thus far.
mice: 6 failed thus far. (dell optical, logitech mx-700, mx-1000, mx revo, mx revo, mx-400)
optical drives: 3 failed thus far.

 

[JackMDS]

In general the LEAST reliable component is the homosapien that is attached to the computer. :sneaky:

Second to the homosapien is the hard drive.

 

[schenley101]

In general the LEAST reliable component is the homosapien that is attached to the computer. :sneaky:

Second to the homosapien is the hard drive.

Seconded a zillion times over. Its those damn humans!

 

[crucibelle]

In general the LEAST reliable component is the homosapien that is attached to the computer. :sneaky:

lol! So true...

 

[CurseTheSky]

Optical drives by far. I threw out a stack (~10) of dead ones about a month ago. In the same amount of time (~7-8 years), I've had no hard drives die, one DOA PSU, one motherboard failure, two dead fans, and one graphics card bite the dust (8800 GTX, temporarily revived in the oven).

 

[khansolo]

Fans, hard drives, and 1 mouse. I don't think I've ever suffered a vid card problem in all my years I've owned them. Even my oldest one that was still used and which I put away recently (ATI 9100 AGP) was still kickin.

 

[mfenn]

Oh yeah mice. Didn't even think of those. I really seem to wear out the scroll wheels.

 

[jacktesterson]

Motherboard batteries


In my 15 years of building pc's it's been power supplies. Ive had 3 fail. 2 hard drives fail, 1 motherboard, 1 video card.

 

[jacktesterson]

The video card that failed was s kyro ii.... Fan quit on it and didn't realize for who knows how long before it died. It got replaced with a 9800 pro I remember.

 

[piasabird]

AMD Processor.

 

[Absolution75]

AMD Processor.

Sounds interesting - please elaborate ^^


Oh yeah, as jack pointed out - psu's are fairly unreliable as well, forgot about those.

I've never had a:
GPU, CPU, Hard Drive, Network Card, Mouse, Keyboard, Speakers, Monitor (or any dead pixels)
die on me.

 

[RaistlinZ]

The end user is always the least reliable, and most prone to random errors.

Frequency of hardware failure pales in comparison.

 

[Arsynic]

In the past I've always splurged on motherboards for other people's builds like my parents. However, when it comes to my own builds I always end up spending a crapload on stuff like CPU coolers and cases but end up buying cheap ass off-brand motherboards like Soyo and Chaintech who don't even make the stuff anymore. So driver and BIOS support is non-existant and the stuff breaks down or doesn't work quite right from the start like onboard audio.

However, the dumbest decisions I've made is going with the onboard RAID thinking it was real hardware RAID when instead it's software raid that's a bear to get working when you have to reformat.