What usually causes your computer the most problems?

[Nakamori]

In terms of different things that have gone/can go wrong over the course of your computer building hobbying career. heh. My vote is for the motherboard. maybe its because I used to have VIA

 

[pandora's box]

im having a really hard time picking out a component. everything in my system has run flawlessly.

i guess i could say my old pc2700 memory for not running at pc3200 but thats not really causing me a problem because it wasnt designed to run at that spec.

now that i think about it the only thing thats failed on me is a really old floppy drive that i have migrated from system to system. it just wouldnt read any floppy disks one day, so had to go get a new one from newegg (10 bucks lol).


system specs:

AMD XP 2700+
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe 2.00
G.Skill PC3200 1GB 2-3-3-11
Visiontek X800 XT
OCZ 520 Watt Powerstream
Asus Quietrack 16x DVD-ROM Drive
Plextor 12x10x32A (Best damned thing ever, still works like its new and its what 5 years old now?)

Anything thats failed in my system is due to me being a n00b (such as my 9700 pro (cracked the core installing a zalman 80c heatsink), and my liteon dvdrom drive (flashed wrong firmware )

 

[UltimaParadox]

Out of the lots and lots of computers I have worked on, memory FTW, lots of low quality memory modules, that probablly never passed memtest since day 1 that have been driving the average user insane with random reboots and crashes for years

 

[Elledan]

Mainboard:

- MSI KT133-based mainboards, like the one in my first self-build system, suffer from a bug in the CPU voltage regulator circuit, causing it to shut down randomly.

- a Chaintech mainboard in a client's system required you to insert the RAM just right, or it'd start beeping at you. I actually replaced the mainboard before I noticed what the problem was.

- stability issues and other annoying things, possibly due to buggy drivers as well, but which would disappear the moment the mainboard was swapped. Strangely enough SiS chipsets are the only ones which haven't given me issues yet. nForce 1 & 2, KT133 (non-A)... I'm now almost paranoid about which chipset a mainboard has

 

[Christopher]

I've had more *cheap* power supplys fail. Been a lot better since I've demanded only antec or pc power and cooling.

 

[schapman]

windows that slow decay it falls into over time until you haev to re-install.

 

[Phranq]

Either PSU or cabling for me. I don't know what exactly happened once when I built a friend a computer, but it wouldn't start, so I moved some cables around and it worked just fine.

 

[M@]

I've had 2 Antec power supplies fail on me recently. I think it's time to buy another brand.

 

[Ice Czar]

Ive never lost a PSU, I always buy good ones, Ive yet to loose a HDD (and I have 14 of em online currently) but even with great care, RAM can go south on you

 

[Kathy]

I'd have to say the mouse, I've never had one last more then a year. But that's just the newer type mice, the old old ones seem like they last forever.

Kathy

 

[Falls Included]

nothing really gives me a problem, but i voted hard drive, cause my 250 is in rma