Which hardware component is most likely to fail? Updated.

[TechnoPro]

Like the title says, I've been curious about failure rates for different types of hardware. If this forum is any indicator, hard drives seem to be the most prone to failure.

I'm looking to make a hierarchical listing from most likely to fail within a normal life cycle, to least likely.

Excluding failure/damage from OC'ing, mishandling, or otherwise user-induced failure, what hardware parts have conked out on you? What have remained the most solid?

----- Update 01.23.2004 -----

Thanks everyone for providing these excellent responses.

One thing I learned from this casual survey is that failure is a very relative term. I have created the following 5 broad types of failure and want to know what you people think. Do the following categories accurately break down the fundamental types of failure?

* Wear and Tear (A CRT monitor going dim after several years / HDD dies from years of friction, vibration, & heat)

* Inherent Defect or Low Quality (Bad caps on certain motherboards / Low QC standards / Bad batch of RAM)

* Abuse / Neglect (Improper OC'ing / Lack of maintenance / Not keeping a system cool enough / not using a surge protector)

* Transport (Mishandling or damage from point of manufacturing to end-users location)

* User Error (Part incompatibility / Improper installation / Anything that leads user to believe the part is bad when in reality, it's not)

 

[hjo3]

Hmmm. Parts I've had fail on me:
HDs: 1
PSUs: 2
CD-ROMs/-RWs/DVD-ROMs: 1
RAM: 0
Mobos: 1
FDDs: 2
CPUs: 0
Fans/HSFs: 1

 

[EeyoreX]

I have had only one hard drive go bad on me. Ever. So I guess all my hard drives are reliable, or are replaced before they have a chance to fail (though I do have 2 13GB Western Digitals humming along. They are at least 4 years old). I have had a few sticks of bad RAM (from the same batch, more likely than not).

I suppose, statistically speaking, hard drives and fans are the most prone to fail of their own accord (ie; non-OCing etc). Why? Moving parts. A hardware item with moving parts is much more prone to failure than one without them.

\Dan

 

[nanyangview]

HD tops the list..
so do CD ROM => depending on usage frequency

 

[beatle]

Anything with moving parts. HD's would be at the top since they have the most, I'd say opticals next, then fans. Most people have had a fan die (or at least flake out) at some point, but then they have more fans than the other things (in most cases).

Although I've had more floppy DISKS fail on me than anything else ever in my life! :Q

 

[mrweirdo]

fans expecialy common in dell systems I have seen particularly on video cards.

@ beatle ya floppy sucked I rember using them once for some reason and i had an entire box of floppys go bad on me just trying to import a driver so windows could reconize a sata drive while i was installing grr

 

[Ionizer86]

I've had a fan (northbridge) fail out, I've seen about 3 HDDs die, one cd rom die (it spun but refused to read any data), and I've seen a DOA motherboard and CPU. I've also had a PSU fail out after I had only bought and tested it for like 20 minutes.

 

[nineball9]

tape drive. (Granted, an uncommon hardware option for most.)

 

[arsbanned]

vid cards followed by hard drives followed by optical drives

 

[Dreadogg]

everything to do with floopy drives and printers, I have very bad luck with printers.

 

[kursplat]

what ever got droped the hardest at the retail outlet...

 

[sandorski]

Hd
cd drives
mobos
vidcards---usually the fans

 

[nick1985]

hard drive

 

[MrCodeDude]

When building, RAM is usually the cause for the machine to not post. At least for me

As for failure once they're running, HD's.

 

[Jutaro]

CD burners

 

[Texun]

CDR's

 

[nitromullet]

I've had the following fail on me over the years:

1 CD-RW drive
3 dial up modems - mostly due to lightening (even with a surge protector)
2 Linksys routers - these sucked and were exchanged for a Netgear router with hasn't given me any problems
1 cable modem - no clue what happened here, replaced by the cable company
1 power supply
1 Riva TNT 2 video card - the fan was fine but the image was all fragmented, this was after over 2 yrs of use.

 

[JC]

The hardware in front of the keyboard.


Seriously, motherboards and hard drives.

 

[NateSLC]

Hard Drive - 3 (Deathstar 75GXP, 2 60GXP)
CD-ROM 50x - 1 (Shuttle)
Motherboard - 2 (Epox 8KTA3, Asus A7N8X Deluxe)
PSU - 1 (Foxlink)

That's it, unless you count the hardware the Foxlink PSU took out when it died.

 

[JBT]

1 Cheap PSU
1 stick of Crucial Ram
1 MSI motherboard.
2 HP Printers
1 GPU fan.

 

[Hyperfocal]

In the past 15 years... failure (total owned)

HD -- 2 (8)
FD -- 2 (6)
CDrom -- 2 (9)
Fans -- many, many got loud and tossed.
RAM - 0
CPU - 0 (8)
MB - 0 (6)
Scanner - 1 (1)
Monitor - 0 (4)
Modem - 1 (12 est)

This doesn't count DOA stuff that was immediately replaced.

Anything with moving parts is going to wear out eventually, solid state stuff doesn't seem to wear out very often.

 

[stephbu]

Combination of moving parts and temperature is what I've seen most of.

Seems like HD MTBF decreases by several thousand hours each time you suffer cooling problems - probably due to increased wear from heat expansion.

Had a whole run of disk failures from a/c outage including catastrophic double failure in a RAID5 array

 

[brunswickite]

1 Aopen CD-RW
1 Mwave brand memory
1 Sony- CD-RW

 

[dullard]

Form my experiences - at home, at work, and I've helped with computer labs at school - it is probably in this order:
1) Monitors most likely to fail
2) video cards
3) Keyboard
4) CD drives (any variety)
5) Hard drives (luckilly I've never had one go bad, I know people who have had them fail)
6) Printer
7) Floppy drive
8) Mouse
9) Motherboard - I've seen one bad one

Don't think I've known anyone personally to have anything else fail.

 

[Corporate Thug]

PSU's, HDDs, and floppy drives IMO