Whats been your WORST computer related purchase?

[Marbo]

Oculus Go. 

 

5 minutes use and I want to throw up. 

 

I was hoping Microsoft would release a consumer version of the Hololens. But as that was looking unlikely I decided to try the Oculus. Only use I get from it is to watch films. 

[FakeCIA]

Razer headphones. I gotta blow out my eardrums with that THX quality.

 

[quickhakker]

5 hours ago, ObsidianAura said:

Made a PC for a friend, and later he wanted to add a sata hard drive.

Couldn't find what i'd done with the bag of modular PSU cables so had to buy a whole new PSU for one SATA connector block.

I did eventually find it and sold the PSU on eBay later. Annoying that there are no easily available replacement cables, but what can you do? 

couldnt you have gone to the manufacturers website or used cable mod? or was that not an option at the time

[quickhakker]

2 hours ago, GodSeph said:

Back with one of my older builds I purchased the CoolerMaster V10, then within a month went to full loop watercooling with an external radiator that connected via the back of the case lol.

okay that actually looks kinda cool

[tankyx]

Ati HD4850 512mb 1 slot cooler.

 

it was overheating like crazy. I put a VF2000 on it, then weld a resistor on it to overclock it. Still surprised 14 years old didnt blow it.

 

 

Not mine but il looked like that.

[Eschew]

Microsoft Surface Pro 2.

"Oh, your charger has issues now? Tough luck, buddy, Microsoft discontinued their Surface Pro 2 accessories."

[Touch My Hamm]

46 minutes ago, quickhakker said:

okay that actually looks kinda cool

It was a nightmare for clearance for cases and Ram. Also for how big it was the performance wasn't the best but it was one of the best air coolers at the time. 

[AbydosOne]

• A PCI (not PCIe) USB3.0 card (never went faster than 2.0, promptly returned after a bit of Newegg drama)
• Every tablet I've ever bought (I break tablets in really interesting ways; see signature for details)
• Antek VSK2000 case (thought I could build a neat TFX "gaming" build, but I ended up killing the (obnoxiously loud) 500W TFX PSU I bought for it, and that was the end of the project)
• Two Gigabyte H61 motherboards (as part of the above project, first one killed by the dying PSU, second came with the NIC DoA (that one was refunded))
• Two sets of powerline Ethernet adapters (replaced with MoCA ("technology of the gods"), and something I comment on a lot here)
• A 10 pack of SATA cables right before M.2 became cool and I converted my server to an LSI card with SFF-8087-to-SATA cables (still in my parts box)

[greenmax]

9 hours ago, quickhakker said:

This can be anything from an RGB ssd to a case and all the silly little peripherals inbetween (controllers, adapters, docks all count)

Anything that has RGB!

 

 

[EL02]

I honestly regret buying prebuilt, even though it would have costed me 20% more to build my pc myself. I just like the feeling of accomplishing something

[Quivz]

6 hours ago, GodSeph said:

Back with one of my older builds I purchased the CoolerMaster V10, then within a month went to full loop watercooling with an external radiator that connected via the back of the case lol.

My mate got one of these. It was his first non-second hand build. I helped him put it together with my 3 builds worth of experience. It was my first experience with non-pre-applied thermal paste. I used the whole tube. Had to take it to a repair shop to get all the paste out of the other components. About 3 months later he bought a monstrous gaming laptop and he's never gone back to desktops since. So that was his worst buy combined with my worst PC build mistake. Although i have also flipped the 110/240volt switch on a PSU once.

 

My worst ever buy was when i had the idea to fill my case with fans which i was gonna paint in UV reactive paint. I bought paint online but the coverage was so dismal i never got around to buying the UV strips to light it. 6 case fans that i only used 3 of and UV paint that i put so many layers onto one test fan it unbalanced the blades and caused the fan to grind when at lower speeds.

[Ravendarat]

I bought an Alienware R5 last october for like 2799 CAD and then like 2 months later I decided I wanted to build a computer and get into desktop instead so I sold that and took like a 800 loss on it. That was unfortunate lol.

[seon123]

Corsair M65 Pro, by far. Way too heavy, uncomfortable and clumsy shape, design that collects dust on the inside, issues with the quality, uses iCue, super awkward "sniper button" placement. It has now been given the task of being the mouse that I throw into my backpack and use on whatever surface, even if it scratches the mouse.

[minibois]

Got way too many to count!

 

On my previous PC I needed a VGA port, but only had DVI. So I got a DVI to VGA adapter, which was the wrong way around and only fit on my monitor. So instead of returning that adapter and getting the opposite (DVI male to VGA female) I got a DVI-I cable..  Man, that was a clunky cable.

Thankfully I know enough about adapters not to make that mistake.

 

Another mistakes was not getting a new PC sooner. Just.. Just in general.

But that is a whole bunch of mistakes wrapped into one.

 

I am overall not too fond of my motherboard, although I have gotten a bit over it. I think all first gen Ryzen boards had issues with RAM speeds.

I guess getting a 250GB boot SSD was not a great idea?

 

Overall I am still kind of new to the whole computer thing, so I didn't make a ton of mistakes in the early days.

[oeci]

I bought a colorimeter to calibrate my monitor for photo editing. At the time I owned a TN panel monitor which was of course rubbish for photo editing. Later on I bought two identical monitors with IPS panels which support hardware color calibration. Unfortunately these monitors only allow hardware calibration with a specific colorimeter which of course isn't the one I bought. So after not even half a year of usage I had to replace my 300 bucks colorimeter with another 300 bucks one. Well at least the obsolete colorimeter made for a nice Christmas gift for a friend of mine who is also into computers.

[ajthedeveloper]

buying a dell

[jones177]

9 hours ago, ObsidianAura said:

Sounds like your Son is happy with your purchases

 

I have a nice 32 inch Agon monitor and Lightsync logitech speakers and G502 mouse + charging mousepad and all kinds of goodies. All of which sit unused since my daughter was born. I only really get to play when she's asleep at 19:00 so i'm downstairs on the laptop, otherwise it'd make too much noise and wake her up. One day last year I got to play whilst my other half took my daughter with her when she went out and I set up in my office. It was glorious, but really, for the amount i get to use it, its a waste of money   

That won't last.  It gets easier as they get older and at some point it gets hard again. 

 

My Son has gotten my computer hand-me downs since he was 8.  He will be 40 this year. 

He travels alot for work so he has a nice gaming laptop. I help him with his desktop. 

 

[Godlygamer23]

2 hours ago, seon123 said:

uses iCue

I personally dislike iCue. My Corsair mouse uses it, and it drives me nuts sometimes.

[SpikeSpiegel]

My AMD Radeon 6570 had to be RMAed and they sent me the same one and it kept BSODing on me.  So I did an RMA upgrade and paid for the trade in value.  So I got an R7 240 GDDR5 1GB and the GPU is terrible  Doesn't support most games back in 2013 and bottlenecked my AMD Phenom II x4 945 3.0GHz.  Never buy any Diamond Multi-Media GPU's they use the worst memory chips on their GPUs.

 

 

[BecauseICanTBH]

I had an encrypted OS drive from an old PC that I sold back in 2012. I wanted to access the files on it but had no idea how to mount it just plugging it into my current PC, since it was a "full disk encryption" OS drive. I couldn't boot from it with different hardware either.

 

So I bought all of the same components from my old build on eBay and built the whole PC and tried to boot the drive from it. 

 

Didn't work. But it turned out I didn't need any of that. I just needed to check a box on the Veracrypt drive mount prompt. 

 

Ended up becoming my GF's computer for like 3 years.

[Bombastinator]

I heard all this hype about how awesome an quiet AIO coolers wer so I bought the highest rated one at the time.  It sucked.  Bubbles.  It was so bad compared to what I had been hearing that I figured it must be an anomaly so I bought another.  Exact. Same. Problems.  2 +$100 cpu cooler.  Both sitting in a box.  Neither got used for more than a week.

[Kochiha Ichihara]

I once bought the cheapest laptop battery I could find. It legitimately exploded.

[YellowJersey]

An HP inkjet printer back in the late 90s. Damn thing was possessed. You know that start up phase that inkjets go through where they make all kinds of noise and it sounds like bits are moving around a lot? It got stuck doing that for an hour and wouldn't respond when I pushed any of the buttons. I ended up unplugging the damn thing and it kept going for five minutes. Tossed it after that. It's now sitting in a landfill somewhere beyond the reach of tech support and exorcist alike.

[Letgomyleghoe]

16 hours ago, ObsidianAura said:

Made a PC for a friend, and later he wanted to add a sata hard drive.

Couldn't find what i'd done with the bag of modular PSU cables so had to buy a whole new PSU for one SATA connector block.

I did eventually find it and sold the PSU on eBay later. Annoying that there are no easily available replacement cables, but what can you do? 

Cable mod!!!

why would you do this!

[PlayStation 2]

I have a semi-regret for my Fury X, but at least it goes through Team Fortress 2 just fine. 

I had a PNY CS1111 SSD that I bought in November 2016 that died a year and three months later, for whatever reason. That was $60 down the shitter for a mediocre SSD at the time that just died for no reason.