What's your experience with hardware?

Hi,
I'm posting here my experiences with some hardware pieces. I'm not starting a bashing thread against any brand.

1) Very bad experience with Maxtor HDD, it lasted one year and started to gave problems like Quantum. Fortunately these brands were acquired by Seagate.
2) Bad experience with MSI. I know MSI made good products but unfortunately my experience is very different.
In March I bought a brand new MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard with a 9950 processor. First, motherboard doesn't wanted to post, no beep or signal. I changed the CMOS battery and it "worked". SATA ports were absolutely crappy, 10 seconds only to show Windows is starting. Later I realized that motherboard was short circuited somewhere from factory because all CMOS batteries I put in lasted no more than 3 weeks! I bought about 6 CMOS batteries!
Finally every time I formated the PC, some days later it started to recognize new hardware that supposedly it should be installed at first.
3) My currently video card had two years of use and is starting to die slowly. It had some artifacts in games. Guess what, it's MSI I loved MSI products but since these problems, no more opportunities for MSI although I should recognize that the guys at MSI's forum are very helpful.
4) Good experiences: a Cooler Master PSU that had three years of intense use and for the moment works OK, same with my currently old Seagate HDD.

What's your experience with hardware you acquired?

 

Can you be a bit more specific? I can fill pages and pages with years and years of experiences with computer hardware, network hardware, server hardware, firewall hardware, etc etc.

To follow your specific brands above....I've always had a dislike for Maxtor drives, as well as Quantum. Over many years and thousands of computers, noticed their drives failed the most) For drive brands, I've preferred Seagate and Western Digital, and was saddened when Seagate bought up Maxtor (which had previously bought up Quantum).

Don't forget most brands have 1 year, 3 year, and 5 year "models"...stay away from the 1 year models.

MSI..similar experience, I had a few of their motherboards tank with blown capacitors. Many years ago (early Pentium/Pentium 2 days) I liked Abit and Asus as my preferred home build brand, of late I still try to use Asus when I build my own at home, they're proven rock solid. Tried a few Gigabyte boards, mixed experiences.

Video cards...I've tended to stick to Asus and Sapphire video cards, never had problems with them. Mostly Sapphire...they actually make most of the vid cards for ATI.

For memory, best experience is with Crucial. I've also used G-Skill a bit with good experiences.

Power supplies...Antec, Enermax, and Seasonic.

 

Please explain - what is a "x year model"? I've never heard the expression before.

Thanks,
Len

 

I have had good and bad experiences with just about every brand. Yes, Maxtor drives have been known to fail, but then again, I have a couple computers right now with Maxtor drives that have been running 24/7/365 since XP came out! Can't complain about that. I had a new high-end WD drive with a loud, high-pitched whine right out-of-the-box, the dog would howl!

I really like Gigabyte motherboards and use them almost exclusively, with an occasional ASUS thrown in. But I have used MSI, Foxconn, and DFI boards too with no problems. That said, ALL motherboard manufactures for awhile there, suffered from leaking capacitor problems, including Gigabyte and ASUS. But Gigabyte replaced two of my leaky boards for free well after the 3 year warranty expired - which REALLY impressed me and made me a loyal customer.

For RAM, almost all have lifetime guarantees so quality is not really an issue anymore. That said, I tend to use Mushkin, Crucial, Corsair, and Kingston, but have also used GeIL, PNY and OCZ. The only lesson that seems to remain consistent is you have a much better chance of problem-free service if using the same RAM throughout - that is, do not mix brands in the same computer - even if the same specifications. In theory, it should not matter if the same specifications, but theory and real-world don't always jive.

For PSUs, I have a long history of using Antecs, but recently have used several Corsairs and Mushkin and like them very much as they are basically silent.

Cases - Antec.

Graphics card - I too like Sapphire for ATI based cards. Gigabyte cards have been good to me, as have XFX.

Monitors - Samsung (with an occasional ViewSonic)

Opticals - Samsung (Sony if on sale).

Western Digital, for example, produces different "lines" of products. Many of their HDs are warrantied for only 3 years, while their higher-end drives are warrantied for 5.

 

Only significant hardware failure here was a Western Digital Protege IDE HD after approx. 6 yrs. of service.

 

When you look at the drive warranty you will see some have a 1 year warranty and others have a 5 year warranty,,,,there is a clue there thats worth noting.

EDIT:

---Sorry, I did not notice this had been responded to already.

 

I have had issues with many Sony products,,,,,so many that I will not purchase any Sony product ever again.

In addition the support offered by Sony in my attempts to deal with the various issues was poor (and thats an understatement).

 

Only Products that have never gave me issues

Toshiba Laptop's - Love them have done almost anything you can think of to them and they live though it.

Asus Motherboards. - The only motherboard I will buy now, my oldest one is 11 years old and still runs as a file / mail server the last 6 years.

Western Digital Hard Drives. - Also the only HD Ill buy when I have the choice, the 5 year warranty I get on my drives is awesome lol.

 

I use bargain basement for everything ECS motherboards, oem AMD cpu's, generic memory. Never had any problems with them, they last till I upgrade.
The only time I have a particular preference is with seagate hard drives, "works' brand power supplies and liteon dvdwriters.
I stay away from ibm/hitachi hard drives, from my experience I had 2 fail at the 1 year mark. I have very good expierence with the maxtor hard drives, I retired them to external USB duty status and they are still running strong.

 

Just like computers...every brand out there will make products for several markets.
What I call "1 year drives"...are the el cheapo products marketed towards cheap computers, entry level models and mom 'n pop shop cheap cloners. Drives that come with just a 1 year warranty. For example...in many entry level model computers a few years ago you would see "Western Digital Protege" drives in there. So someone that doesn't know the truth may go "Oh cool, I have a Western Digital Drive". What they don't know is that the Protege drive is a piece of crap. Western Digital makes good drives..yes, but it's their Caviar series, Raptor series, Black Edition series..and most especially...their RE3 series, which are good...those RE3 models are 5 year drives. Meaning the warranty is for 5 years, with an over 1.2 million hours MTBF rating.

Seagate is another favorite brand of mine, but they also make cheaper models, years ago they had a crap model called the "U-Series".