QOTW: What's the worst PC component you've ever bought?

[MAdMaN]

An ASUS wi-fi usb stick that stopped working in under a month. Coupled with the graphics card that failed a few months after the warranty expired, I swore off buying anything from ASUS ever again.

[ik9000]

Nvidia FX 5200 - this card was a piece of rubbish. after that i learned.

+1 - you took the words right out of my mouth. Stuttery storage heater.

[ik9000]

also does windows 10 count as a component? <sees hornets nest, weighs up reaction, , runs>

[ChristopherW]

An iomega ZipCD USB1.1 external CD burner. Huge plastic purple case, nasty mains power brick, 4x write maximum (with a following wind and the stars aligned), no USB buffering and terrible media compatibility. I produced enough coasters to fill a suitcase with that drive, and recordable CDs were not cheap back then.

I ended up loaning it to someone and frankly didn't care when I never got it back.

[shaithis]

Old socket 7 biostar board probably....total meltdown

[spacein_vader]

An Aureal A3D sound card. A phenomenal card with gaming audio that (IMO,) hasn't been matched since. Then 3 months after I got it Creative Labs sued them into bankruptcy (even though Aureal won,) bought up the IP and depreciated everything to do with it.

Still not forgiven them.

[go4brendon]

ball mice, hahaha i murdered dozens at lan's

[DanceswithUnix]

+1 - you took the words right out of my mouth. Stuttery storage heater.

I played the whole of half life 2 with one of those, I think because my passively cooled 6600GT demonstrated that passive cooling doesn't work, even with the fancy heatpipe arrangement that Gigabyte used. The 5200 was also passively cooled, but at least it didn't die.

An Aureal A3D sound card. A phenomenal card with gaming audio that (IMO,) hasn't been matched since. Then 3 months after I got it Creative Labs sued them into bankruptcy (even though Aureal won,) bought up the IP and depreciated everything to do with it.

Still not forgiven them.

I had one of those. I thought it was driver hell. Probably still got it somewhere. One of my steps on the path to giving up on plug in sound cards completely.

[scaryjim]

...The 5200 was also passively cooled, but at least it didn't die.

My passive FX 5200 froze as soon as you started *any* 3D load. I ended up getting one of those PCI slot exhaust fans to stick next to the heatsink, and it worked like a charm.

Then I saved up for a Radeon 9800 Pro and never looked back

EDIT:

Thinking back on it, I'm not sure I've ever bought an outright *bad* component. The high end stuff I've bought has all run properly, and the cheap stuff has been adequate for the job in hand. And I've bought some pretty shockingly cheap bits and bobs over the years - most of which I've made use of then sold on again. Perhaps I've just been lucky, or maybe I'm a good judge of what to buy

[alsmith]

remember the 'click of death'?

It hit me on a few drives- so much for backups when they clicked too.
It really put me off Seagate drives and I still generally avoid them- I'd used them from my first drive which was a massive 40 Mb (NOT a typo- that is Mb NOT Gb)- a *lot* of faith was destroyed.

[rich835]

Asus Star Ice CPU cooler, sounded like a jet engine and was so heavy that it actually cracked under it's own weight.

[Millennium]

Turning this around, it's really nice to have a good mouse. I'm very happy with my G400s from Logitech - I bought another Logitech mouse a few days ago it's still in it's box! It's a G402 - was £14.99 + £3 V.A.T

>Very good things!

[Spreadie]

Not actually a purchase of mine, but got.to share the pain - a cyrix 586 CPU and some random VIA chipset mobo a mate bought then asked me to build/install. For some reason, the Windows installation took about an hour longer than on an Intel or AMD rig - it used to o get bogged down in hardware detection and slow to a crawl.

I hated going round his place to upgrade or troubleshoot that rig. I think I actually chipped in towards his next upgrade, just to make my life easier.

[DeadlyNightShade]

GeForce GTX765M(contains "NVIDIA Optimus").
It's nothing but waste.
Too low setting menu,and often forced to use iGPU.
I threw away about 160,000 Yen due to it.
One of the reason to made me hate NVIDIA.

[Mr_Jon]

Thinking back on it, I'm not sure I've ever bought an outright *bad* component. The high end stuff I've bought has all run properly, and the cheap stuff has been adequate for the job in hand. And I've bought some pretty shockingly cheap bits and bobs over the years - most of which I've made use of then sold on again. Perhaps I've just been lucky, or maybe I'm a good judge of what to buy

I'm with Jim on this one; can't remember buying anything that turned out to be rubbish...that I wasn't expecting to be tat. I'm more guilty of buying stuff I don't really need than splurging on cack.

[devBunny]

A pair of OCZ Petrol SSDs. One died after a few weeks and the other second shortly after that. As far as this customer is concerned, Toshiba bought a toxic brand.

The runner up is my Corsair K90 keyboard. I actually really like it, in par6ticular the 18-key side keypad wioth programmable keys which are a bioon. The proinl;em is that the keys are way too sensitive. After six years with it, and even if I really pay attention tyo what I'm typing, I have to edit something practically every time that I type. I didn't this time, so you can see what I mean. I think my next keyboard needs to be a standard mechanical with heavier, more clicky, keys and I'll get a separate numpad and find a way to make it programmabnle.