Name the source of your last HARDWARE problem

WingaWinga MrSouth Africa Icrontian
edited May 2007 in Hardware
I'm doing a bit of research for an article I'm writing and would appreciate some input from the SM community.

For the guys that repair PC's all day as a living and of course the members that come to SM for help and advice and the Guru's that help them, I would like to know what the most common hardware problem is.



More importantly how many of those problems were caused by running the system from a cheap and inadequate power supply.

More than one option is allowed in the Poll.
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Comments

  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    The last 3 things to pack up and die on me were PSU's...
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    The poll may not help you too much, as it allows for only one incident. Last incident was a video card. In the last three years, all other hardware failures that I can remember were hard drives, three to be exact (out f about 15 to 20 used).

    EDIT: OOPS, forgot -- killed two motherboards at extreme overclocking. Both were RMA'd. I consider this hardware failure, not user mistakes, because the boards had 'overclocking' BIOSes, to include CPU and Northbridge voltage adjustment.
  • WingaWinga Mr South Africa Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    Thanks for the input Leo.

    I'm hoping that members who post here take the time out to list specifics rather than rely exclusively on the poll. It doesn't have to be a single event or single hardware failure and if it spans a period of time thats also fine :)
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    I voted motherboard, but I had forgotten that my last problem (occurring about one hour after I got the mobo replaced) was actually a hard drive.

    An IBM Deathstar, to be precise. I must have been tempting fate to keep using that drive after fixing a failure elsewhere in the rig :rolleyes:
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited May 2007
    2 CPUs and 2 Motherboards are the latest things I have had die on me. Separate systems.
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited May 2007
    I voted before I read the posts. I just replaced the mobo on this ThinkPad....or Lenovo did. But I had two clients loose hard drives last week. That is the most common failure I see. Both dead HD's last week were lappies running on the factory A/C adapter.
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited May 2007
    In the scheme of things, motherboards wins. 5 desktop, 1 notebook
    Only 2 cpu's (1 intel, 1 amd), few psu's, few harddrives and a couple of graphics cards.
    Had some 120mm fans fail, but that means very little.

    Voted "motherboards".
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited May 2007
    And of the mobos, I think you need to know if its a laptop or desktop. Laptop motherboards get replaced if:
    1. the USB's go bad
    2. power supply fails
    3. video card goes bad
    With a desktop all of those cures don't involve a mobo.
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited May 2007
    Motherboard. Put in an Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) that had been in a system taken out by lightning. Was hoping it was still good because it could run @ 2.5GHz on air. Not only was it dead, it fried the mobo too. Oh well. I had a spare mobo and another AXP so I wasn't put out much.

    It was my fault though, not the mobo's. I knew going in that I might fry the mobo, but since I had spare parts I figured it was worth the risk.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    I've lost one PSU in 8 years of home-brewing, and it was 4 years old. Haven't lost another piece of hardware.
  • edited May 2007
    Hardware problems are countless here, because my hobby is to create them by stretching the parts until they fail and take a step back :)

    But complete failures are different. This is not a complete list probably, but the major hardware failures I can remember are the followings.
    Lost two sticks of Kingston DDR after using several years.
    Lost an ASUS motherboard since mosfets fried while overclocking. Actually, I do not remember maybe I was not overclocking at all :scratch:
    Destroyed one Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 while soldering for vcore mod. I keep practicing soldering on it now. :)
    Lost 3 PSU's (Coolermaster, Fortron, Enlight) possibly due to manufacturing defects and aging.
    Lost 2 WD IDE harddisks after using about 2 years.

    Not too much hardware loss compared to the truck load of hardware passed from my workbench during all those years.

    All of the other problems I have been constantly fixing are due to my modifications and overclocking. For example, the last problem was experiencing random reboots on my main computer and it was my fault. It was fixed by increasing vdimm of the Crucial Ballistix DDR DIMMs.
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    Lost 3 PSU's in the last year. 2 at home on two systems. One at work.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited May 2007
    Most common problem value bin psu failure. (You know the brands powmax,@power,optimax, thame star) (Since we don't sell quality ones we cram another value bin psu in and give them a 30 day warranty)

    Second most common problem Dead maxtor slim drives. (Yes I gave a brand and class its own category there that bad.. we sold so so so very many in the past its all seagate now not dead ones yet.)

    third most common - Defective ram (We replace it with Kingston as its only slightly more expensive then the garbage brands and it offers far far far better reliability *never had defective Kingston returned*.)

    fourth most common Defective motherboard (Almost always pc chips or jetway sometimes ecs rarely anything else once we had a dead asus come in).

    edit: For personal parts failure just hard-drives. (Drives don't like getting dropped when in an enclosure :() (I RMA'ed it and received a 200GB drive back)
    (I selected hard-drive)
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    over the years I have lost one stick of memory, out of about 16 that I have in use.
    I have lost two PSUs. One just went dead, the other went flaky.
    But the winner in HDD. I have lost three deathstars, an done other drive.

    This does not count stuff that was killed by my actions. That is called fun.
  • OrianeOriane Turn around.
    edited May 2007
    2 pairs of memory. Both 2x1GB OCZ Platinums.

    First pair failed Memtest after about 3 months. The second they sent to replace them with had one board fail to even POST.
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited May 2007
    Mine was actually a monitor- but I'm assuming you meant core component- so I voted Memory.
  • edited May 2007
    On all my own systems, I've never had any internal hardware failures (but then again, I've never really done anything fancy like overclocking or case modding). I've had one external hard drive in a USB case fail for some indeterminate reason during a flight (worked before I got on the plane, didn't work afterward), and my laptop currenly has some very noisy fans, but that's it for my own hardware.

    When I was in Korea fixing other peoples' computers, though, I was given pretty much everything. Bad motherboards (the Dell SX270 was notorious for these, and pretty much every one we had needed to have its motherboard replaced), corrupted hard drives, broken cooling systems (that computer was disgusting, I'll link to a video of it later), failed hard drives, bad power supplies (it's fun when this happens as you're working on the computer, you just go to eject the CD and when it's sticking out about half an inch the whole system dies and doesn't come back), laptop touchpads... that was fun stuff.
  • SPIKE09SPIKE09 Scatland
    edited May 2007
    My vote went to PSU failure, had one fail a few weeks back a generic POS in my touring rig, rated at 400W it weighed about 400grams it lasted 6 years though and the rig folded 24/7 for 18 months:eek:
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited May 2007
    I've had a number of problems with various machines over the years.

    The most likely component to fail (in my personal experience) has been hard drives. This is skewed somewhat by my lengthy experience with a couple of notorious duds. These include the infamous IBM DeskStar debacle (times four, in my case), and the 80GB Maxtors which also liked to die premature deaths.

    In second place, I would put PSU's, though I've had nowhere near the run of bad luck with them that I've had with hard drives.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited May 2007
    Bah forgot about burning up the video card on my Laptop, already voted. Thank goodness for warranties.
  • yaggayagga Havn't you heard? ... New
    edited May 2007
    Really the ONLY thing I've had problems with are motherboards and that cheap chinese crap support with rmas taking months on end just to get another board I have to start the process all over again with! 4 TIMES IN A ROW ASUS!!! HALF THE YEAR!!! JEESCH!!!! And my board still does not work all the way!!! I need to start an American company up.

    I have had 1 harddrive go bad on me, but Seagate support was excellent, and my new drive was twice the size returned back to me. I may have a Maxtor going now, it seems some parts/sectors are not working properly, but usually eventually do work, just a little picky and pokey.

    Granted, I've only really used/worked on computers in this millenium, and I use good powersupplies and usually good memory. I don't care who makes the GPU or CPU.

    Actually, I did have a Belkin Router (*caugh* crap), a no-name router (*ahem, didn't deserve to live), and a Khypermedia CD-RW drive go bad, all returned or sent for warranty, as well as the occasional PATA cable that quit. Oh, I almost forgot, I chipped a cpu once too in which AMD said tough luck, and bent some pins on a my brand new pentium 4 Northwood, in which Intel gladly replaced free of charge, being a "first time customer and all"
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