Features - QOTW: What's the best PC component you ever bought?

[DDY]

For me it has to be the Intel C2D E6600, the performance jump from the existing CPUs at the time was phenomenal.

[mikeo]

VOODOO 1... the start of "real" 3D graphics.

[TeeBlack]

Asetek 570LX!

[ScoTTisH-GingeR]

Diamond Monster II Voodoo2 12mb..... sold my playstation with all bits n bobs just to buy that beast from PCWorld it was soooooo worth it over my rage pro turbo

[mikeo]

Followed closely by the VOODOO 2. Two of them in fact in sli. Gave me a bump in resolution from 800x600 to 1024x768. WOW. Still got one of them in my bits and pieces cupboard:

[Sacred]

My Fujitsu PI computer yes the one that came with "finfin", first desktop I ever owned and introduced me to PC gaming!

[Tpyo]

OCZ Vertex 2 60Gb SSD - made such an awesome difference overall, more than any other upgrade I'd done before.

Agreed - my first SSD was the biggest bang/buck improvement for a component I'd ever seen.

My personal favourite component would probably be my kepboard (Enermax Aurora). I'm only gutted that they don't seem to do the subsequent premium/lite incarnations in silver with a UK layout (places have black, but any time I've tried to order the silver - even from UK companies, it turned out to be German layout or similar).

My worst - A creative X-fi titanium sound card. Nothing wrong with the card initially. Within months it was useless. Despite being the new card, they didn't provide updated drivers for the (then) new incarnation of windows, and it kept F***ing up. From the furore on the forums, I wasn't alone in this respect, and I seem to remember they actually went after someone who made a fix to get them to take it down (bringing customer service to a new all-time low). I really don't see how any company can justify such a short duration of support for a component, and have refused to by creative ever since.

[alwayssts]

Tough call.

One is the ATi 9700pro. While I had owned a voodoo2 and (shock) MAXX Fury (agp dual-gpu card back in the day) prior and replaced it with a 9800 and x800, I never experienced another WOW factor until the 8800gt. It created the nostalgic AMD fanboy you see today...and pretty sure I'm not alone.

The other notable mentions would be the many brainchildren of Oskar Wu: the ABIT NF7-S, DFI NF2's, and NF4 ultra-d. Those boards showcased that while overclocking was still in it's infancy, and far from the one-click solutions we have today, everything could be easier (more bios/software and less jumpers). 5v rail for ram, built-in memtest, the solder trick for sli etc on the nf4, stability of the old abit board (perfect for learning to OC the OG way), and high FSB potential of the original Lan Party 2...and of course sandstorm audio which was, for those that remember, freaking awesome. I really miss those days...they were fun and exciting. They also led to my worst purchase ever though...A freaking Prometia Mach 2. Oh, to be young...

[alterbyme]

Gonna have to go with my Nvidia 670, in that, i am far better off with this rather than an AMA card.

[ET3D]

There are several I can think of which made a lot of difference.

One is the 16MB of RAM I bought for my first PC (after having an Amiga). That allowed OS/2 to run great and Windows 3 programs to multitask well on it. It's also probably the most expensive component I ever bought, at $700.

The most life changing component was the ViRGE DX. It was my first 3D "accelerator" and playing Tomb Raider with bilinear filtering impressed me more than any other graphical improvement ever did.

The GeForce 256 I bought (used) was a huge improvement over the Rage Pro I was using before it, and since I was writing a thesis which involved rendering in OpenGL it was a real boon.

The best value for money upgrade was the Athlon XP 2100+ which replaced my 700MHz Pentium 3.

[Mosfetv]

Pentium 4 2,0.
I've had that thing for 6 years and it served it's purpose well.

[OilSheikh]

Hmm... so many ...

mine has to be Arctic Cooling TC4 for Socket 478. It's the most silent cooler I have ever had!

[jim]

Probably the 7800GS.

I had a knackered old FX5200 that was absolutely appalling. Going from that to a 7800GS felt like a last hurrah for my AGP system and kept that PC going for almost as long again.

[EzioAs]

My GTX460. Still rockin in 2012. Runs game how I want em

[mtyson]

I think my Gravis Ultrasound Plug & Play Pro was an exciting PC upgrade back in the mid 90s.

[tad2009]

For me it has to be an ATI All-In-Wonder Pro graphics card with integrated TV Tuner. It took up only 1 slot and mean I could still play the new PC games to come of the shelf, watch TV and also use it to play My Playstation and later on my Gamecube through it with absolutely no lag, unlike most dedicated TV tuners of the time and since.

Than in itself brought mixed expressions of Amazement and being seemingly impressed through to OMG this guy is sooo Geeky kinda looks so I don't think they quite got it...