A thread about brands that used to be popular and either went belly up or rarely show their face in North America anymore

[TheinsanegamerN]

Every single OCZ SSD I bought died within 1 year. I don't know why I kept buying them, probably because they were ahead of their time as far as speed, but they were usually a bit cheaper price too. I think I had one of every flavor flash controller. I got to know all their tech staff on a first name basis and was sad when Toshiba bought them.

Ahh, the good old days of SandForce controllers! Who remembers those garbage things?

They really should have moved to literally any other controller.

Yep. Still got my 790GX board kicking around. lol.

Namely that one- https://www.newegg.com/dfi-lanparty-dk-790gx-m2rs/p/N82E16813136058

Man I miss the old days when motherboards looked like PC boards and not metal ingots. Love the colors too! I miss DFI.

 

[15th Warlock]

I don't know if you guys remember these brands but:

S3 made my very first "3d card" a 2MB S3 Virge DX
Canopus was the brand of the first Voodoo card I bought, a Pure3D 6MB Card, it had a composite video out, I loved that card!
BFG was once upon a time a great Nvidia board partner, had both a GeForce 6800 Ultra and a GTX285 made by them, good overclockers for sure!
and Abit used to make some killer motherboards, had the privilege of owning the legendary AB-BX6 back in the good old Pentium II days.

Most of that hardware is still somewhere in my parents house, those brands were relevant once upon a time, now they're gone.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Ahh, the good old days of SandForce controllers! Who remembers those garbage things?

They really should have moved to literally any other controller.

Really. I have 2 Patriot Infernos with SF controllers that have been running in daily machines for more than 10 years

.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Really. I have 2 Patriot Infernos with SF controllers that have been running in daily machines for more than 10 years

.View attachment 283543

And my uncle has a Ford Pinto that still runs, and never exploded.

Those early sandforce controllers were notoriously unstable. It's why samsung became the gold standard in SSDs for years, they were one of the few with their own controller.

 

[freeagent]

Yeah I had a 128GB RevoDrive.. that thing was fast af for its time. It died. Most inconveniently of course..

 

[R-T-B]

Panasonic. They withdrew from the NA TV market completely fairly recently.

Swiftech

My first and last watercooled custom rig was all Swiftech. It was thermally great but I just got tired of cleaning the loop out every year.

How could anybody forget IBM? I was part of the infamous "Deathstar" class action lawsuit.

IBM still sells servers, at least.

Still sad. At least Intel gave it a helluva sendoff with the Z87

I actually have a working DX58SO2 somewhere. It was not an excellent OCing board, but the fact its still alive says something.

 

[dirtyferret]

Panasonic. They withdrew from the NA TV market completely fairly recently.

How the mighty Panasonic and SONY have fallen in the Audio Video world from where they were 20 years ago.

 

[Tatty_Two]

How the mighty Panasonic and SONY have fallen in the Audio Video world from where they were 20 years ago.

They still both sell sh*tloads in the UK though so I presume Europe too.

 

[R-T-B]

They still both sell sh*tloads in the UK though so I presume Europe too.

They made good stuff. I assume most americans just didn't want to pony up for it.

 

[dirtyferret]

They made good stuff. I assume most americans just didn't want to pony up for it.

or they thought those were their parents brands like GE, zenith, and RCA before them.

I actually bought a new Panasonic TV about ten years and the picture was awful. I ended up returning it to BB for a Samsung (much better pic) but I asked the guy WTF is up with Panasonic and he said most people who buy them or SONY end up returning the sets compared to Samsung and LG. In the 90's & 2000's all my sets where Panasonic or SONY. Now it seems everyone goes with Samsung, LG, or TCL.

 

[R-T-B]

or they thought those were their parents brands like GE, zenith, and RCA before them.

I actually bought a new Panasonic TV about ten years and the picture was awful. I ended up returning it to BB for a Samsung (much better pic) but I asked the guy WTF is up with Panasonic and he said most people who buy them or SONY end up returning the sets compared to Samsung and LG. In the 90's & 2000's all my sets where Panasonic or SONY. Now it seems everyone goes with Samsung, LG, or TCL.

Probably after their plasma division failed. They had no idea how to make lcds so they were just rebranding other panels.

 

[80251]

I remember my friend's Filipino grandmother (RIP) refused to buy any Japanese brands -- she was the most loyal customer RCA (also RIP) ever had.

 

[R-T-B]

I remember my friend's Filipino grandmother (RIP) refused to buy any Japanese brands -- she was the most loyal customer RCA (also RIP) ever had.

Well given the cultural history there sadly I can understand. If you're old enough to remember what happened then lets just say it'd leave a mark.

 

[95Viper]

Let's stay on topic.
And, that is "A thread about brands that used to be popular and either went belly up or rarely show their face in North America anymore"

Thank You

 

[bobbybluz]

Skyhawk aluminum cases (especially the ones with slide-out motherboard trays). I used to get them dirt cheap locally from a computer store that sold off display units for as cheap as $5 twenty years ago.

 

[OkieDan]

Aztech sound cards.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I cannot believe nobody brought up DFI by now

I was about too, just late to the party. DFI LAN Party boards were the cream of the crop for a couple of years.
EDIT: Looking back, they were the go-to board for many reasons for almost 6 years.

Anyone remember OCZ?

Hell yes, I still have a few of the USB Rally drives hanging around and they still work, 18 years later..

 

[newtekie1]

Hell yes, I still have a few of the USB Rally drives hanging around and they still work, 18 years later..

I have a couple of those too. I also have a couple of their SSDs, true OCZ SSDs from before they were bought out by Toshiba.

 

[80251]

Matrox or Tseng. Tseng labs was big into videocards back when they were ISA.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Optane - this is brands, not companies.

I had hopes for that to gain traction, but it didn't survive to the PCIe Gen5 era. If it had, we might have seen some killer performance drives.

 

[bobbybluz]

Matrox or Tseng. Tseng labs was big into videocards back when they were ISA.

Matrox is still around video in professional market: Matrox | Video hardware & software solutions

 

[xu^]

Used to always buy Abit motherboards, was gutted when they ceased, i remmeber having a BFG GTX 260 gpu, + 320mb rvram it also had a really wild pic on the covering, no1 seems to do this anymore.

Had an OCZ 600w PSU back in 2009, it only lasted about 3 yrs before it died.

 

[OkieDan]

Used to always buy Abit motherboards, was gutted when they ceased, i remmeber having a BFG GTX 260 gpu, + 320mb rvram it also had a really wild pic on the covering, no1 seems to do this anymore.

Had an OCZ 600w PSU back in 2009, it only lasted about 3 yrs before it died.

My OCZ GameXstream PSU lasted 12 years and over 100K hours. I think it died in the last PC I built and gave away.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I have a couple of those too. I also have a couple of their SSDs, true OCZ SSDs from before they were bought out by Toshiba.

Almost everything OCZ made was excellent, if not golden, quality. I miss them as much as I am missing EVGA in the GPU market.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Almost everything OCZ made was excellent, if not golden, quality. I miss them as much as I am missing EVGA in the GPU market.

The Almost is important. OCZ was notorious for pushing their RAM chips to within an inch of their life. Interestingly (and anecdotally), the only SSD that's ever died on me was an OCZ. Granted, it was in a salvaged system...