Products to stay away from. (horror stories)

[Monstermunch]

Well, here's a list i've formulated both from experience and reading in the forums regularly of things to avoid:

PSU's
Q-Tec
Cheap low priced rubbish
Low powered (under 450w)

RAM
Crucial Ballistix
G Skill
Crucial (General)
Corsair (if you have a DFI Mobo)
PC3500, PC4000 and up to DDR2 - Avoid (if you want speed go for tight timings on PC3200, they're quicker!)

HDD's
Maxtor (definitely a no no)
Raptors (Noisy and expensive) & Raided SATA2 drives will outperform

MOBO's
Any Crossfire Chipsets (general issues with bios updates and conflicts etc)

CASES
Avoid any cases with fans smaller than 120mm (unless you wanna go deaf)

GFX Cards
SLI or Xfiring (Dual cards complete waste of money, with chipsets being updated every 6-9 months, whats the point)

TFT's
Avoid TN Panel monitors if you watch movies etc

PRINTERS
Epson (use twice as much ink as competitors)
Cheap Printers (charge you twice as much for cartriges to compensate)

 

[Rob43]

Cuicial Ballsitix kits! Went through 5 kits in total over a year

Nightmare,worst hardeware i've ever had the misfortune to be lumbered with

 

[jbloggs]

Maxtor 200GB MaxDiamond Plus 8MB cache PATA, had it for only 6 months and it pack up for no reason, it was for backup, neither did it give any warning. RMAd it, was sent a Western Digital Caviar SE 200GB PATA, very good HDD indeed, glad they were out of stock of Maxtor 200GB HDDs when I RMAd it!

Have an Aopen DVD 1648/AAP DVD-Rom for about 16 months now, have had no problems with it, very quiet as well.

 

[Paa`]

If you do a google for nf4 and cd/dvd drive problems it's extremely common.

You might not even notice problems.

My pc used to randomly fail to get past the boot screen even tho i triple checked all usual hardware problems and everything was at stock.

I googled the problem and came up with compatibility problems with cd/dvd drives and nf boards.

Look at nvidia's drivers for the past 3 years for nforce boards, they always mention problems with cd/dvd being fixed.

Drives ive used with problems..

Phillips
plextor
lite on
sony

All semi new models, Not bought any cd/dvd drives before 2003.

 

[Spyhop]

Only thing I can think of is MSI optical drives. I went through a CDRW and DVDROM in a very short space of time. They just stopped recognising discs and the CDRW would knock itself out whilst burning then refuse to open. They hardly had any use either.

Yeah, and there's no point contesting other poster's experiences. Of course the majority of a given product are going to work properly.

 

[KizZ]

Well, here's a list i've formulated both from experience and reading in the forums regularly of things to avoid:


G Skill

From what I've read on the forums G Skill are good value for money

 

[nikebee]

From what I've read on the forums G Skill are good value for money

indeed G.Skill are great value for money, highly overclockable and some of the best memory around.
about 6 months or so ago there was a bad batch of the G.Skill LE sets, i think it might even be before that... it was certainly before the current ZX, HS and HZ models came out.

i am quite shocked the amount of people that have had problems with Maxtor drives.

is it just a case of if everyone says they're bad, then they are?
like Q-Tec PSU's... they're not crap PSU's, they can handle low end machines perfectly fine... put it under the stress of a high end machine then you are asking for trouble. to be honest they are cheap for a reason, they're not designed for a high end gaming/overclocking machine, they're designed for a low end consumer market... do you think OcUK would be selling them if every single Q-Tec PSU they sold blew up?
in all fairness, i doubt that half of the people on the forums that say "Q-Tec are crap!" or "Q-Tec = BOOM!" have even used one before.

 

[Monstermunch]

indeed G.Skill are great value for money, highly overclockable and some of the best memory around.
about 6 months or so ago there was a bad batch of the G.Skill LE sets, i think it might even be before that... it was certainly before the current ZX, HS and HZ models came out.

i am quite shocked the amount of people that have had problems with Maxtor drives.

is it just a case of if everyone says they're bad, then they are?
like Q-Tec PSU's... they're not crap PSU's, they can handle low end machines perfectly fine... put it under the stress of a high end machine then you are asking for trouble. to be honest they are cheap for a reason, they're not designed for a high end gaming/overclocking machine, they're designed for a low end consumer market... do you think OcUK would be selling them if every single Q-Tec PSU they sold blew up?
in all fairness, i doubt that half of the people on the forums that say "Q-Tec are crap!" or "Q-Tec = BOOM!" have even used one before.

Each to their own, this thread is for people to comment on hardware they've had problems with!

Just looking at consumer surveys alone will tell you that generally people are unhappy with Maxtor drives. With friends, family and my own all told I have had 9 maxtor Hdd's go pear shaped in the last year. 2 of them my own!

I'm sure all manufacturers have their good and bad points, all we're doing is advising people on the products they're more likely to have problems with.

As far as the gskill memory goes, read the memory forums. I've seen numerous threads in there over the last 3 months complaining about multiple rma's on the zx and hz series and also the ballistix. I've never seen on for OCZ or Mushkin!

 

[n3x]

Fingers crossed my G.Skills been great so far... i would go OCZ now tho.

I also had a Q-Tec PSU running in my previous pc for about 2 years without fault!

Only big prob i had was my even older psu (cant remember the brand) went pop and took out my Galaxy Glacier 6800. I replaced the psu (with the q-tec) and got a new galaxy sent only for the 6800 to die once again within a couple of weeks, funny thing is the q-tec was fine i stuck an old 5200 in there and it ran for about another year before it got stripped and sold in december.

 

[R@tman]

Maxtor 200GB MaxDiamond Plus 8MB cache PATA, had it for only 6 months and it pack up for no reason, it was for backup, neither did it give any warning. RMAd it, was sent a Western Digital Caviar SE 200GB PATA, very good HDD indeed, glad they were out of stock of Maxtor 200GB HDDs when I RMAd it!

Have an Aopen DVD 1648/AAP DVD-Rom for about 16 months now, have had no problems with it, very quiet as well.

ive got 3x 80gb Maxtors 2 sata 1 Pata now ive had these a few years and not a any problem with these i had a deathstar before and that packed in

now im getting ready to upgrade my hds soon any ideas what to get ?

 

[AFK_Matrix]

To get this back on-topic, AC Ryan Blackfire fans. I bought four, all 120mm with the seperately variable speed and LED lighting.

When I got them I thought "[sweary word] these look really thrown together in a Taiwanese sweatshop."

There was no band around the LED strip and all the connecting wires were exposed. I hooked up two of them to fan headers on my £140 ASUS motherboard, one to a brand new Thermaltake Hardcano 13 fan controller and one through a Nexus Prolong. I turned on the PC. There was a cloud of grey smoke and a distinct smell of burning.

The PC would not restart. All the fan connector fuses had blown, as had the power supply fuse and the 5A fuse in the plug. The Hardcano was a pile of melted solder fuse and one half of the Prolong refused to work.

In the end I received over £400 worth of replacement components courtesy of AC Ryan. The power supply fuses failed to protect it as it was wired incorrectly (it was an AC Ryan Cablefree) and two of the four fans had shorts in the wiring.

Avoid.

Well I have 2 Blackfire fans in me pc in my sig. So far so good (touch wood )

Just thought I would say as they do look spectacular in the case, sorry to hear of your problems though WJA96. Prehaps they have learnt by there mistakes?

Also have the Gskills HZ memory running since Jan and not one prob, not had the chance to OC them but will be doing that soon.

As for Maxtors, well had the 250GB DiamondMax Plus 10 for 1 year and had no problems but then read all the stuff about them and decided as it had all my data etc on to swap it for a 300GB Seagate, also helps the seagate had 5 years warranty.

My only problem has been the dreaded IBM Deathstars. I was busy at Uni and didn't have time to do my own rig so bought a DELL high end rig . Was fine for like 3 years then the HDD decided to go **** up right when i was doing my final end of year project Got I think 2 replacements from dell (free of charge though ) but all went the same way so went into town and bought a western digial i think.