PC related hardware purchase that you regret very quickly after purchase.

[eidairaman1]

Always wanted a display based fan controller....so fancy but I got a pretty tough Lamptron FC2 with knobs not as pretty, but built like a panzer

My case has 2 knobs up top to control 2 fans each (i believe supports 3 but I balanced them. I like the granularity of a Rheostat/Varistor/Potentiometer

 

[AusWolf]

So it did this when it blewup?

Or This?

Im not a fan of automobile touch screens, give me dials for the radio

Something like that. It was a long, continuous beep so loud that could shatter even the neighbour's windows.

Radeon 9600 SE in 2004. Not only would it lose to an NOS GeForce 4 Ti 4200, one of the next mornings, turned on my Asus A7V8X-X, and the Award BIOS said, "bleeeep--bleep-bleep-bleep". Turned out I had to warm up the video card for it to even give me a BIOS screen! Knowing that's a severe error, I think my brain went into some kind of shock! It got sent back to Staples! I was a PC-rookie, compared to now!

Then I got a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64 MB, even when it seemed expensive for the age of it, but it was the video card to get 19 years ago, for most games. Even Need For Speed Underground 2 will run well!
At least I didn't get the video-boot-failure bull that I got with the defective Radeon 9600 SE.

SE cards were a scam (just like LE on GeForce). I had a 9600 XT which was absolutely brilliant.

My actual Lian Li O11D Rog XL Case. Never seen that bad temperatures like in this case.Now i bought an anidees case. But not all of the hardware gets in with my hands to mount. I need to buy again a case. Let's see what it will be. Especially as i'm in need of 2 ODD slots and a place for a 420mm Radiator with 45mm of height.

That reminds me of my Corsair 280X. My most expensive case ever, with an airflow comparable to 1990's beige boxes. A total waste of money.

Now I have a Kolink case (never heard of the brand? Neither have I), which costs 1/4th of the Corsair and has infinitely better airflow.

 

[eidairaman1]

Something like that. It was a long, continuous beep so loud that could shatter even the neighbour's windows.


SE cards were a scam (just like LE on GeForce). I had a 9600 XT which was absolutely brilliant.


That reminds me of my Corsair 280X. My most expensive case ever, with an airflow comparable to 1990's beige boxes. A total waste of money.

Now I have a Kolink case (never heard of the brand? Neither have I), which costs 1/4th of the Corsair and has infinitely better airflow.

R2s shrill i believe can break windows if done continuously.

Yeah the budget minded 9600 SE was definitely a box of chocolates and could barely be counted as a 9600, some had great success of overclocking or unlocking them like the Radeon 9500, Radeon 9700 that came before, and 9800SE/9800, x800/850 line that came after.

 

[gurusmi]

That reminds me of my Corsair 280X. My most expensive case ever, with an airflow comparable to 1990's beige boxes. A total waste of money.

Now I have a Kolink case (never heard of the brand? Neither have I), which costs 1/4th of the Corsair and has infinitely better airflow.

I decided to cool as much as possible with water. So i can take the radiators to the air exit and keep the warmth out of the box. I also will buy a new case as the already bought anidees (I never heard of that before) cannot be all the equipment mounted as i want to. Right now i think about a thermaltake Core P8.

 

[#22]

Now I have a Kolink case (never heard of the brand? Neither have I), which costs 1/4th of the Corsair and has infinitely better airflow.

Looking at Kolink's website, they seem like generic, rather budget cooling brand, but they are the guys e.g. somehow staying behind Noctua and doing so from Austrians' beginnings in 00's. Btw such Chinese connections with "big brands we know" are an intriguing topic. Are Chinese partners just to handle manufacturing and logistics or maybe it's in fact them doing whole R&D and selling us various stuff under "big brands we know"? I've always wondered.

 

[AusWolf]

Looking at Kolink's website, they seem like generic, rather budget cooling brand, but they are the guys e.g. somehow staying behind Noctua and doing so from Austrians' beginnings in 00's. Btw such Chinese connections with "big brands we know" are an intriguing topic. Are Chinese partners just to handle manufacturing and logistics or maybe it's in fact them doing whole R&D and selling us various stuff under "big brands we know"? I've always wondered.

I've realised that there's nothing about the brand of your PC case. All one needs is enough fan mounts and a mesh front. As long as I have these, I couldn't care less what the label on the box says.

Edit: Not to mention, even the paint quality is better on the cheap Kolink case. Paint on the Corsair started scraping off as soon as I put the first fan screw in.

 

[Vario]

Looking at Kolink's website, they seem like generic, rather budget cooling brand, but they are the guys e.g. somehow staying behind Noctua and doing so from Austrians' beginnings in 00's. Btw such Chinese connections with "big brands we know" are an intriguing topic. Are Chinese partners just to handle manufacturing and logistics or maybe it's in fact them doing whole R&D and selling us various stuff under "big brands we know"? I've always wondered.

Kolink is a Taiwanese company that manufactures Noctua branded products.

 

[#22]

I've realised that there's nothing about the brand of your PC case. All one needs is enough fan mounts and a mesh front. As long as I have these, I couldn't care less what the label on the box says.

Edit: Not to mention, even the paint quality is better on the cheap Kolink case. Paint on the Corsair started scraping off as soon as I put the first fan screw in.

Agree, you just see what it represents and there's no point of suggesting with brand - you will only pay premium for the same from ones reputable. Brands defend only with tending to have good cases or ones good for the price.

Kolink is a Taiwanese company that manufactures Noctua branded products.

I know and I hope there's no the problem with me calling Taiwanese Chinese due to looking from the perspective of one industry mostly divided between them.

Coming back to topic (or rather offtopic lol), even this Noctua's site presents Kolink in the way like they are quite important here: https://noctua.at/en/rascom-kolink

And this is example of what interests me in general, but I have never seen somebody covered:

"Kolink International Corporation is a Taiwanese cooling specialist established in 1996 and well known among industry insiders. Over the years, Kolink designed and manufactured many top-performing heatsinks under various brand names that succeeded in international markets. An experienced R&D team and ultra-modern production plants in Taiwan ensure continuous progress, efficient manufacturing conditions and strict quality standards.

At Noctua, Kolink is not only responsible for supply chain management, manufacturing, packaging and on-site quality control, but also contributes to R&D and handles international export logistics."

 

[Tomgang]

Well my current Dual system... Just kidding. Love it.

1. My very first hardware purcase i regret was as a innocent kid in the early 2000´s buying an IBM Deskstar 75GXP hdd = Deathstar.

Note from wiki: The unreliable IBM Deskstar 75GXP product became notorious as the "Deathstar" (only one of at least twenty IBM products in the Deskstar family).

The IBM Deskstar 75GXP (six models ranging in capacity from 15 to 75 GB) became infamous circa 2001 for their reportedly high failure rates,[5][6] which led to the drives being colloquially referred to as "Deathstar".[7] Due to this, the drives were ranked 18th in PC World's "Worst Tech Products of All Time" feature in 2006.[8][9] Note the simultaneously announced IBM Deskstar 40GV, a 5400 RPM version of the 7200 RPM 75GXP, did not suffer from the same reported high failure rate.

So yeah i as a kid got me one of these Deathstar as a second hdd for games, school related work and other more important files. As you might can guess, how do you think a 11 year boy reach to get told that all your games and saved files, music, school work, pictures and more are gone because of a failed hdd (i dit not know a bout external hdd og backup of files back then). I was litterly traumatized by it, as i could not understand/comprehend it. I can just say that i was sad and furious about it.

2. in 2002 my pc i had was old and died. i could not afford a new system. So my me and my family shared the exspense to buy a new family shared pc. We all payed some amount of the cost. It was an Amitech pc prebuild (Amitech is an danish pc builder and company going bankrupt in 2009, but got buy by another company and maybe for the better cause of how rubbish there pc where) based on a amd Athlon XP 1500+ cpu, 256 mb ram (later upgrade to 512 mb) and a nvidia geforce 2 with 32 mb vram. What a pile of junk it was. Only just over 1 year old (just after waranty was over) the PSU died and damge motherboard so it still worked, but became so unstable. over the next 2 year the floppy drive died, cd-drive die and HDD as well. at 4 years old it was such a pile of junk that we where forced to throw it out. At that time it could barely boot to windows any more. yup that was a regret after only 1 year of use. since then just a pile junk. This was also what scared me away from prebuilds. Since then i only got pc i build my self and has so much more happy with that.

Well that was my two stories of hardware regrets and i have not have other since then as i by then know that google a product before bying is wise to do.

 

[Steevo]

R2s shrill i believe can break windows if done continuously.

Yeah the budget minded 9600 SE was definitely a box of chocolates and could barely be counted as a 9600, some had great success of overclocking or unlocking them like the Radeon 9500, Radeon 9700 that came before, and 9800SE/9800, x800/850 line that came after.

I got 2/5 unlocked, and with a pencil mod, better cooler and altering the BIOS they weren’t terrible for the money.

I used the locked slow ones in FarmVille builds with celery processors or the like for passive cooling so they wouldn’t die in the computer desks of that era. Used to make a couple hundy every weekend building/cleaning viruses/upgrading/fixing PCs while I got to play HL or some CS on mine.

 

[Dork7]

Apple Mac Classic back in 96. Should've bought a used SE/30 since I was that inclined back then
Still, the NetComm ADB 56k modem made up for it somehow, I think lol

 

[Sound_Card]

Google Pixel 7a.

 

[Nater]

Lol, saw this and thought, "Polling's rate's overrated, 1000 is plenty."

Then I googled....and realized this mouse is 125.

Been seeing people rant and rave about new 8000 hz mice, and I think it's 100% a gimmick that is wholly unnecessary, but uhh, yeah, 125 sounds terrible.


Image retention concerns is the main reason to potentially hate on them IMO.

It explains the battery life I think. I've went waaay back to my G700s. One rechargeable AA battery lasts less than 2 days of heavy use in this thing.

Speaking of regrets, I also regret buying the Logitech G502's that go on sale on Amazon. (currently $38). I bought 3 at once a few years ago and between me and my 2 boys all three were junk within 2 years.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Every single one that dropped in price a few weeks or months after I bought something?

 

[basco]

buying a playstation 5
never used it since 2 years

 

[Chaitanya]

LG monitor, absolute garbage quality for the asking price.

 

[freeagent]

For me, it was the Toledo 4200+ CPU.

I already had a nice Abit board, had a nice Asus board, had a Sandy 3700, had a Toledo 4400.. but that 4200 was supposed to be an awesome overclocker according to reviews at the time.

Lost my Abit board pushing it, then my Neo 480 lost a rail with a pop and my Asus board stopped working. Lost 2 systems in 1 weekend. That was the weekend I moved to Intel, as Core had just been released a few months before. I vowed to never run AMD again. That was back in like 2005 or so. I didn't touch another AMD system until I built the ones I have now starting in 2020 lol..

 

[eidairaman1]

buying a playstation 5
never used it since 2 years

Heard games were lacking. I cannot for the life of me have a controller of Sony's in my hands since day 1 I ever tried a Playstation in the 90s, they just don't fit right. The Sega Dreamcast, Xbox Large and Xbox S Controllers fit my hands.

I got 2/5 unlocked, and with a pencil mod, better cooler and altering the BIOS they weren’t terrible for the money.

I used the locked slow ones in FarmVille builds with celery processors or the like for passive cooling so they wouldn’t die in the computer desks of that era. Used to make a couple hundy every weekend building/cleaning viruses/upgrading/fixing PCs while I got to play HL or some CS on mine.

Need for Speed Underground 1 & 2 were beautiful on the 9700 Pro I had. Learned the Xbox used a FX5200 because the detail levels were minimal.

 

[alexdwilsons]

Every Corsair Vengeance RAM I bought gave me troubles.. I bought Ryzen 7 3700x with vengeance 16GB RAM, so many issues with stability and playing with XMP profiles to no avail. I even had to RMA the 3700x thinking it was the faulty component, but nope even with the replacement I had same issues.

Then I bought 10700k with Gskill RAM and it was very stable, come 20204, I decided to upgrade my ram to 64GB, guess what? I found cheap Corsair vengeance 64GB kit 3200MHz, bought it off amazon and installed it, next day I got a crash. So my advice to anyone is stick to GSKILL for RAM, and avoid the vengeance even if the price is competitive.

 

[A Computer Guy]

LG monitor, absolute garbage quality for the asking price.

Which model?

 

[sepheronx]

X1800XT launch day, replaced by a problem cured X1950XT just a few months after for the same price.

I did exact same thing. X800GTO to x1800xt, thought it was gonna be great. I remember I sent back to NCIX like twice and finally just got a 1950xt later on.

 

[eidairaman1]

I did exact same thing. X800GTO to x1800xt, thought it was gonna be great. I remember I sent back to NCIX like twice and finally just got a 1950xt later on.

X1950 Pro 512 to replace the 9700 Pro I had, it played COD 4 MW smooth

 

[TheLostSwede]

LG monitor, absolute garbage quality for the asking price.

Oh, you reminded me of the my 4K AOC monitor. That was my biggest regret. Apparently I only took awful pics of it, but this POS never worked properly. Had to contact the consumer rights people in Taiwan to get a refund, as even after sending it back for AOC to do whatever they did to it, it never worked like a monitor should.
Basic problem: It would randomly switch off, which required me to pull out the power adapter for 10 seconds for it to work again.
Weird problem: Speakers would start to squeal at full volume for no reason.
Really annoying problem: The left side of the display would glitch and have this weird banding the full length of the display. Not a graphics card related issue, as I tested with two different cards.
AOC claimed there was nothing wrong with. Someone I know in Australia had exactly the same issues with his one too.
I will never buy AOC again after that mess.

Heard games were lacking. I cannot for the life of me have a controller of Sony's in my hands since day 1 I ever tried a Playstation in the 90s, they just don't fit right. The Sega Dreamcast, Xbox Large and Xbox S Controllers fit my hands.

My cousin (who's 60) loves his and the games. Each to their own I guess.
I remember being over at a friends place many, many moons ago playing on the original PlayStation, I got blisters on my thumbs from the controller...

 

[eidairaman1]

Oh, you reminded me of the my 4K AOC monitor. That was my biggest regret. Apparently I only took awful pics of it, but this POS never worked properly. Had to contact the consumer rights people in Taiwan to get a refund, as even after sending it back for AOC to do whatever they did to it, it never worked like a monitor should.
Basic problem: It would randomly switch off, which required me to pull out the power adapter for 10 seconds for it to work again.
Weird problem: Speakers would start to squeal at full volume for no reason.
Really annoying problem: The left side of the display would glitch and have this weird banding the full length of the display. Not a graphics card related issue, as I tested with two different cards.
AOC claimed there was nothing wrong with. Someone I know in Australia had exactly the same issues with his one too.
I will never buy AOC again after that mess.

View attachment 355061


My cousin (who's 60) loves his and the games. Each to their own I guess.
I remember being over at a friends place many, many moons ago playing on the original PlayStation, I got blisters on my thumbs from the controller...

It's the way the controllers feel in the hand, just awkward for me. I'm sure a 3rd party design might have done better for me.

 

[kapone32]

windows............oh hardware

maybe going from 32 gigs to 64 gigs..........no perf difference, but was only an extra $120 so wasn't too bad, and used the 32gb kit in another pc.

Or the GT1030 with 2GB of ram for $130 cause there were no other cards during covid under $1k.....

6500XT was $229 Cad at launch