Post your hardware failures and WIN A 4GB Flash Voyager Mini

Soldato
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Following on from this thread, I would like to officially ask you for a list of hardware that has failed on you, this way I can collate a list of bad products and dodgy components. As we would all like to know which manufacturers/components to avoid :) I decided to offer a meagre prize to make sure I got enough people to respond to make the data useful. This is just a data gathering exercise.

All you have to do to enter is to either post here with the hardware that has failed on you or post a comment on my blog post.

I need you to help me some more though; As I want to get the most people to respond as possible can you please post a similar thread on other hardware forums you may frequent and ask them to visit the page;

http://chaoticsignal.com/2009/04/06/post-your-hardware-failures-and-win-a-4gb-flash-voyager-mini

and just leave the comment there with a real email address. I want to get at least 100 people to participate (so we can get a wide sample), on here or on my blog I don't mind, so we can get as much of a wide sample as possible. Can't be too much work for a free USB drive :D

Please see the blog post for the "rules". If anyone would like to contribute something else to prize fund to ensure we get the most people to respond as possible please pipe up.

And of course I'll post all the information gathered here :)
 
Hiper Type R 580w which exploded spectacularly and took out a two week old DFI motherboard.

OCZ GameXstream 700w (different pc) blew up with less than 10 days use.

Powercolour ATI 4850 1GB that arrived faulty.

2x MSI P35 Neo-F and 2x MSI P31 Neo-F motherboards. Most unstable, poor quality pc components i have ever had the misfortune of coming across.

3x Maxtor Diamondmax hdd's. The original was a Diamond Max 7 which was warranty replaced with a Dmax 9 which was warranty replaced by a Dmax 10 which also failed and found itself getting beat up with a sledgehammer. Lesson learnt? Avoid Maxtor like the plague.
 
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Had a few RAM sticks die on my over the years back in the day when I used cheap RAM.

My last MS keyboard died on me, some serious cross wirings, letters would change their location then some buttons stopped working, the last straw was when I could no longer substitute letters. For example 1 would typ3 lik3 th15 or s@y th@t.

A few years ago there was a power surge down our phoneline that took out my 56k modem & motherboard, not to mention our house phone.
 
DFI Ultra Infinity NF2 - fixed with BIOS hotflash
Asus P5B - Asus have gone downhill lately...
another different DFI Ultra Infinity NF2, the caps are cheap and nasty
some BH-5 ram that I clocked to hell and back
x800 xtpe melted around the fan socket, PWM chip I think... PCB tracks melted so had to bin it...
Two laptop hard drives in an Acer laptop that used run very hot
Maxtor 250GB hard drive in external enclosure, 2 years after purchase, managed to recover data with freezer trick
Abit socket A board, notorious for bad caps
Tagan PSU, soft start circuit cap blew, managed to fix with a little soldering...
Shuttle SN45 socket A board, stopped working after a year or so, Modded for 3.3vDimm tho

If it ain't broke, you ain't fiddled with it enough! :D
one Durex condom - lad is now aged 8
:D
 
This strikes me as a bit unfair. The stuff that has the most reported failures is probably going to be the stuff that's most popular. For example, you'll probably discover more dead Corsair PSUs than Q-Tecs, but that's because everybody buys Corsairs and avoids Q-Tecs like the plague. It's not meaningful unless you know how many are still going as well as how many are dead.
 
roccat kone.

on my 6th now. but i got a mousepad/tshirt/hat/etc as freebies : D

can that be counted xD?

story so far is waited a year for it to go through testing, pre ordered for a month at ocuk, they ditched me after 3 RMA's (first RMA was within 12 hours which ocuk were astoundingly helpfull untill communication ceased), roccat were then very helpfull (very kind german fella sorted me out for an RMA, then pointed me to the english distributors) and im now friendly with a guy who is the main uk distributor.

However roccat say the issue is fixed, and it isnt.

maxtor 250gb hdd agges ago, DOA 2 days before xmas. Then the rma died, then i got a samsung.
my 4870 1gb died over xmas.
asus p5k premium, then deluxe, then another deluxe died. ALL rma'ed.
seagate 750gb 7200.10 sat here dead. gonna rma tomorrow
6600gts died on me
my first ever socket A althon XP 2500 was DOA. lol
oo and a single core althon 64 conked out on me too. Venice core i think?
 
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My 4GB Flash voyager mini broke on me.

I agree with Mattus. A better way, would be for people to list their hardware, and whether it has broken or not. That way, you would be able to take ratios and percentages of the chance of specific products breaking, and you'd get more conclusive results.
 
Iiyama Pro 450 CRT 19"
OCZ 2GB PC6400 DDR2 (1 module)
Enermax 550W PSU
Asus M2N-E SLI motherboard
Old Asus motherboard (I can't remember the model number)
Old Gigabyte motherboard (I can't remember the model number)
Another old Gigabyte motherboard (I can't remember the model number)
Western Digital 500GB Caviar Black SATA II Hard drive
Western Digital 40GB Caviar Blue PATA hard drive
Pioneer CDRW Drive (I can't remember the model number)

I honestly don't see the sense in listing any hardware that a particular member has had that's developed a fault. Particularly with old hardware where the company may have changed, or their entire manufacturing process.
 
Nice idea.

But if you chose wisely in the first place, then the likely hood of those parts failing would be less, but everything can fail no matter the quality.

For example, Corsair PSU's are supposed to be high reliability items (even though Corsair just badge them) but my HX620 went bang, but I know my HX1000 is a different beast ... do you see where I'm coming from?

But if you want to know what has failed computer wise for me over the years the most, its wires, speaker wires, headphone wires, mice wires.

Its been mostly wires.

You really need thousands upon thousands (if not millions) to give an accurate demo graph of computer hardware failure.

If it were a specific poll, say PSU's, then try CPU's and so on, that might work, but good luck trying to make some sense of such a broad spectrum as *all hardware failures* it certainly wont be accurate especially if its contained to one forum such as this.
 
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