The worst hardware you have ever bought?

[Sputnik]

Just thought this subject might make an interesting thread.

For me it was an MSI K8N neo2 platinum motherboard. When I first got it had loads of problems trying to install an OS because the hard drives kept disappearing from BIOS, which I later found out was because there was a compatibility issue with Nvidia SATA controller and the drives I was using.

And the final straw was when Nvidia decided that they would not do any Vista drivers for the Nforce3 chipsets.

[aidanjt]

My current Silverstone SG-03 chassis. The screw heads for the side stabilisation bracket are already stripped. It makes removing it extremely irritating, and they're non-standard screws, so to replace them I'd have to call Silverstone, and chances are the metal they're made of will be just as soft and they'll end up stripping again. I could leave the bracket off, but it's rather needed to keep the whole thing in shape, and adds much needed strenght to the structure of the chassis. Also, the two hard drive panels could have done with some extra work. I have to disconnect the SATA and power cables in order to remove the drives. Which, again, requires removing the side bracket to get at.

[Fraz]

Probably a PCMCIA wireless card that would totally lock up any computer you put it into. When you ejected it, the computer would then unfreeze. Never got it to work.

[aidso]

Dell Dimension E520. Its a pile of ****e runing Windows Vista...not that i hate the OS so much as i hate all the crappy parts that came with the machine. The only thing that was worth while from the cost was a 24" monitor. They can stick their dual-core CPU up their....

[Agent]

Gigabyte 7V-RXP. Had a design fault which Gigabyte wouldn't admit to until they quietly released a V2 of the board

Pretty much every Creative card I've owned.

Every Epson I've owned due to clogged heads (yes, even with official carts)

Some cheap no brand DVDROM that used to spin so fast it would shatter almost any disk.

Ohhh, I could go on and on...

[jbloggs]

A Packard Bell iMedia 5093, bought back in 2002, made up of very poor quality hardware, and when I wrecked the mobo by trying to update the BIOS, it cost me almost £150 for a replacement mobo (ie. a PB type), this costly experience taught a number of things.

How hard the way of experience can be!

[nvening]

a floppy drive.

[spiral out]

An ASUS motherboard of ebay, it never worked properly.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

DFI ICFX3200-T2R/G motherboard, Had many problems with the crappy BIOS and it never did work properly. I replaced it with a cheap P35 based motherboard which worked much better and cost half the price!!

[Ciber]

Hiper Type R PSU. Not only did it fail quite quickly (18 months). It fried part of my motherboardwhen it went. Worse still it wasn't even cheap (£60).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hiper Type R PSU. Not only did it fail quite quickly (18 months). It fried part of my motherboardwhen it went. Worse still it wasn't even cheap (£60).

Neither was my motherboard!! I hate it when expensive bits fail and their much cheaper brethren have no issues!!

[PeteSmith]

Netgear print server, damn thing kept locking up after every print which meant i had to manually power cycle it before it worked again

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Netgear print server, damn thing kept locking up after every print which meant i had to manually power cycle it before it worked again

Did you try upgrading the firmware?? The router at home had issues too and updating the firmware to the newest version solved the problem!!

[GoNz0]

XFX video cards, need i say more

[Main]

One of those ATI Theatre 550 TV and video capture cards, the few times I managed to get it to work it didn't stay like that.

LG DVD drives which have incompatibilty problems with various copy-protection systems newer than the drives.

[synaesthesia]

For someone else, 10 x WD MyBook external hard drives. Worse pieces of hardware I've ever had the misfortune to deal with and WD want shooting, they should know better than to release something with more bugs than an overpopulated ant farm.

For myself, going back a fair while an "emergency replacement" power supply - all hail the Qtec 550w that couldn't handle my new graphics card. A whopping Geforce 4 Ti4200!