QOTW: Your favourite component of all time?

[judge56988]

Scythe Mugen cpu cooler.

[Zhaoman]

Q6600 probably, the last of the overclock kings

[QuorTek]

Old Age: My C64, it still works, the first model of course.
Old Age: my 8bit NES, it still works.
Old Age: my Matrox G200 + VooDoo II
Modern Age: My CH Products Hotas System, Combat Stick, Throttle, Pedals and a Flight Yoke as well, still works as was new.
Modern Age: My Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers, I still use them today
Modern age: My Nvidia GeForce 690 GTX.... it lasted all the way up to the 10XX series, it never failed

Today witin the last 3 years +/-: Currently I would say my 1080ti, it probably gonna be AMD 7900XT or NVIDIA 4080~90 next time.
Today within the last 3 years +/-: I am not really sure I found anything yet, much of the hardware can't take the heavy use long enough.

[EasterEEL]

Abit BH6, fantastic mobo which enabled me to overclock my P2 CPU by some crazy %, to the performance of a CPU costing zillions more.

Of course being Abit updating the BIOS was always a fraught affair and when they released a BIOS revision FUxxx.bin, I should have realised flashing it was going to end in tears. The mobo was permanently borked but I suspect the non Japanese capacitors where about to fail anyway.

[DanceswithUnix]

Gravis Ultrasound sound card. Basically an Amiga sound system turned up way past 11 on a PC plug in card, and fully supported in Doom.

The 3Dfx VooDoo was impressive, but I think the sound card pips it.

[Spreadie]

Abit BH6, fantastic mobo which enabled me to overclock my P2 CPU by some crazy %, to the performance of a CPU costing zillions more.

Of course being Abit updating the BIOS was always a fraught affair and when they released a BIOS revision FUxxx.bin, I should have realised flashing it was going to end in tears. The mobo was permanently borked but I suspect the non Japanese capacitors where about to fail anyway.

I had the BH6 and the BX6 - both fantastic boards, while they worked. The BH6 died without warning and I think I killed the BX6

[Core2Extreme]

Back in the day, I typically upgraded whole computers, rather than components. So it's hard to pick out individual components from the older days.

With that in mind, I'm going to have to choose the Core i5 2500k processor. I've been running it as my main CPU for almost 10 years now, and it's still powerful enough for everything I need. It isn't even overclocked currently, though it can do a fair job of that as well. I expected it to last 4, maybe 5 years, and it's already at double that.

Honorable mentions go to the Matrox Millenium G200 graphics card, which still produces a perfectly clear 1920x1200 output via VGA even today, despite being from 1998, and the Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard, which is way more comfortable than my previous keyboard and doesn't lose keystrokes to the air like its wireless successor that I tried but then returned to the store.

[Rubarb]

For me its probally an old 3dfx card, my first scanner (a hand held thing that your rolled over photos), A hard drive hot swap bay (something I still use today albe it a sata one now).

Intresting thing is all this thread every item was about the same kinda price and buyable with a weeks wage ... unlike now a days.

[Rad77]

For me its probally an old 3dfx card, my first scanner (a hand held thing that your rolled over photos), A hard drive hot swap bay (something I still use today albe it a sata one now).

Intresting thing is all this thread every item was about the same kinda price and buyable with a weeks wage ... unlike now a days.

Yes, possibly my Voodoo 2 card - 3D was literally the game changer.

However I think perhaps my most fondly remembered graphics card was the cheap and cheerful Geforce 2 MX. That was a real eye opener to the potential for eye candy... my first taste of hardware T&L and suddenly my games had *gasp* shiny water!
And yep, I had one of those monochrome hand scanners too.

Like you say, those components were all priced around the £75-£100 mark I think - certainly a good sum in those days but nothing like the relative prices now.

[bae85]

Dual core Phenom II X2 550 BE. Unlocked the 3rd and 4th 'defective' cores, could overclock it comfortably with all four cores to 4GHz. And best of all I got it in a sale for half price.

[Terbinator]

Probably a Q6600, followed by my 6700K.

[Demontoad]

Celeron 300A - the first time I ever owned a top-performing CPU.

[cheesemp]

My first SSD. I think it was a 64gb Crucial M4. An expensive alternative to a HDD at the time but transformed using a PC.

[Spud1]

I'd have to say the "MOSFET" - arguably the most important component every invented for computing

But if you mean in terms of consumer PC parts, thats a tough one. Like most I think you go back to your first "real" parts - and for me that was Voodoo 3000. First "proper" graphics card (had a Diamond Stealth 2 S220 before that).

Although I do have my 486DX2 framed on the wall behind me, being that was the first CPU I owned

[GIGARAM]

my creative 3d blaster (voodoo) was the one thing i got that blew my mind and nothing has ever changed that since going from software 3d to hardware 3d wow that was awesome

[Methanoid]

My first 3d card, the Videologic Apocalypse 3dx - there's been no one thing that revolutionised gaming that come close to the transition from no 3d-card to 3d-card

No word of a lie but I can to type exact same thing, even though I loved my Voodoo cards. One of my friends used to work at Videologic too