Maybe I should just get a DELLLLLLLLLL (RANT)

[KILLorBE]

Uhhh yeah, maybe that's what I should do, but seriously I never had much problems before.

To me it looks like HW manuf. started making lousy crap because they want us to buy their most expensive crap.

Lets sum it up:
S-Cards that died since 2K:
1) AWE64. (My '98 AWE64 Gold is still working fine...sure I payed well over $200 for it).
2) SB PCI128 (Took the input of my amp with it) (A friend has a dead one too...uhh I believe he killed 2 of them).
3) SB Live (From a friend....same friend as above).
4) Terratec X-Fire 1024....will RMA it this week.

Dead MOBO's:
Abit ST6...died ~2 hours after I got it.
Abit VH6T....can't play a single game on it for more than 5 minutes, not to mention that my CPU won't do 1.6GHz on this board, while it does 1650+ on my TUSL2-C.

Cases:
Can't those @#$@^&*^$$# do a good soldering job and spend some time on the way the 5V line is connected to the speaker!!!!

Graphics cards:
Well I never killed one, but obviously the Club3D GF4 MX440 didn't like my VH6T.....hell I got a bunch of artifacts while installing WinME...and the stupid board doesn't regonize my Logitech USB mouse.

HDD:
2001 IBM 60GXP 40GB, It died because I did a mod...my '97 Maxtor survived the mod while it was on the same cable.

CAN'T YOU STUPID MANUF'S MAKE SOMETHING DECENT ANYMORE????????????...I mean look at the old crap that's still working, and all the new **** that died wayyyy too soon.
Not to mention that there seem to be 2 standards for floppy drives...uhh yeah my current floppy drive works fine but because of this notch and the 1 pin missing (on Abit boards it's still there) I can't use my cables...well I bought a new floppy drive that'll take the cable both ways...but it still SUCKS.

Why do I want a Dell???, so I can ***** about it and tell them to fix it

The last GOOD part I bought was either my Asus V7100 (GF2 MX) or my Asus P3V4X....well my Mushkin and Kingston memory is still working fine too....uhh and my ancient floppy drive

Other parts:
They're outdated pretty fast so I sold them before they were worn out or whatever.

Tell me your opinion/experience please.

 

[clash]

Well, everybody wants cheaper/faster parts.... They have to cut corners somewhere, Like on that HD platter....

 

[sandman001]

I bught an 8RDA+, and it was messed up hardcore. RMAing it tomorrow. The DIMM slots where messed up, and it wouldn't recognize any of my ram, my floppy, or my video card. I think maybe the entire northbridge was messed.

Newegg took it back though.........God bless newegg.

 

[Breadfan]

Well, everyone gets their share of messed up stuff...as for your HDD dying during a mod, I don't think that was IBM's fault!

The thing with Dell is they test their systems, (I think...), so they weed out mose of the obviously bad stuff before shipping it out. (I say I think becuase at work we got one with a dead floppy drive...which was found out AFTER I shipped it down to our field office...argh!)

I've built a lot of systems, between here, work, and for family. I've built well over 20 brand new rigs, and assembled many more out of some used parts. I've had my share of stuff that didn't quite work right. But for the prices of most stuff, I can't really complain.

I've still got old hardware around here kicking it as good as the day I bought it. My ASUS A7V is just as stable as when I got it. (Actually, more stable thanks to BIOS updates.) It's on 24/7 with the Athlon 900 I bought with it.

Even though I've messed around with my old GF2MX and my 8500DV, I've yet to break them. And that A7V has a Voodoo3 in it that runs like a champ.

I've got some old Pentium stuff, a few PII's,and even an old 286 Novell 2.0 server that still work.

I will agree with one thing. Over the past year, I've felt stuff has gotten a little less reliable. I attest it to the speeds we're running at nowadays, and the intense cost cutting companies must do just to stay afloat muchless make profits.

Ofcourse, when things do go wrong, Dell would offer support. But when you send back a comoputer with holes in it, a CCFL, 27 fans, and a HDD with a window mod, I doubt they'll honor that support

Another thing to keep in mind is that when you OC, you're pushing all of your hardware past their specs. Even your sound card...if your PCI bus is overclocked, so is your soundcard. That can bring the best (I mean worst!) out of shakey products.

 

[KILLorBE]

Well, everyone gets their share of messed up stuff...as for your HDD dying during a mod, I don't think that was IBM's fault!

Sure we all get our share, but why does it happen more lately?
And about my HDD, the cable I connected the LED and resisitor in series to was supposed to be connected to ground, so hell yeah I blame IBM for it, as they did'nt follow the 'standard' IDE rules....but WTF is standard these days, they all **** around if you ask me.

I've built a lot of systems, between here, work, and for family. I've built well over 20 brand new rigs, and assembled many more out of some used parts. I've had my share of stuff that didn't quite work right. But for the prices of most stuff, I can't really complain.

I can't really complain either, but I tend to buy expensive crap...or at least not the cheapest crap....but it still sucks.

I've still got old hardware around here kicking it as good as the day I bought it. My ASUS A7V is just as stable as when I got it. (Actually, more stable thanks to BIOS updates.) It's on 24/7 with the Athlon 900 I bought with it.

Even though I've messed around with my old GF2MX and my 8500DV, I've yet to break them. And that A7V has a Voodoo3 in it that runs like a champ.

I've got some old Pentium stuff, a few PII's,and even an old 286 Novell 2.0 server that still work.

That's exactly what I mean, the old crap keeps on running, and the new crap keeps on dieing.

I will agree with one thing. Over the past year, I've felt stuff has gotten a little less reliable. I attest it to the speeds we're running at nowadays, and the intense cost cutting companies must do just to stay afloat muchless make profits.

Attest it to speed or whatever, should we be a victim of that crap?..I didn't think so.

Ofcourse, when things do go wrong, Dell would offer support. But when you send back a comoputer with holes in it, a CCFL, 27 fans, and a HDD with a window mod, I doubt they'll honor that support

Of course I would be quite nice...when I RMA it....hell if I kill something due to OC'ing I'll stand uyp and say it was my fault, I'm paying for that crap anyway so why not be honest?, I mean if I kill my CPU due to OC'ing I'll surely not RMA it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when you OC, you're pushing all of your hardware past their specs. Even your sound card...if your PCI bus is overclocked, so is your soundcard. That can bring the best (I mean worst!) out of shakey products.

Well you can't call my OC's pushing their limits, if you asked me the same question ~1 year ago I would have to agree, but look at my systems....one is running barely over specs (at most 34.5 MHz) and the other is running way under specs (31MHz) but crap still is dieing.


BTW: My S-card died when my sytem was running @ 1620MHz (33.75MHz PCI bus).

 

[DDR-PIII]

Well, everyone gets their share of messed up stuff...as for your HDD dying during a mod, I don't think that was IBM's fault!

The thing with Dell is they test their systems, (I think...), so they weed out mose of the obviously bad stuff before shipping it out. (I say I think becuase at work we got one with a dead floppy drive...which was found out AFTER I shipped it down to our field office...argh!)

yeah each dell model goes through something like 17,000 hrs of testing before before they have it on sale, well thats what DeLL says.

 

[JaY_III]

wow thats some bad luck.
the only thing i had had a problem with is some bad caps (since fixed) and a 80GB hardrve started to develop some bad sectors (PCI bus was not overclocked) so i returned it.....
guess i am just lucky

 

[modenaf1]

yikes. that luck seems the oposite of

 

[athayer187]

Yea - well, I have a dell laptop. I was getting random reboots and stuff - so I yelled at them and they came to my house and replaced the mobo. That didn't fix the problem, so I told them that it was the memory. They sent me two new sticks (2x512, I only originally had 2x256) so I got a new mobo and a gig of ram for free. I'm happy

 

[Breadfan]

Yeah...that is some bad luck for sure.

I can say this though, I have gotten certain peices of hardware that have been pretty flakey. I had an issue with an 8KHA+ system I built for my boss. He kept getting a corrupt Win registry in Win2k. I finally just swapped everything out with new components and an ASUS board. The old components went into a system in our office.

The odd part is that now those old components work perfect, as does my bosses machine. It's sorta like...why didn't they work perfectly in the first place? I probably took apart and reassembled/reinstalled that system 3 or 4 times...

I've been pretty lucky I guess...I've gotten some decent hardware. Although, recently I've not been ordering as much stuff. Latest mobo's I have are recent KT333 offerings, and my last HDD purchase still had a 3yr warranty.

Hopefully just a string of bad luck for you...one that'll turn for the better.