What was the worst PC component/accessory that you regret buying?

[Zemeon]

Big regrets with the Logitech G403, I couldn't find the price I paid for them back in the day I just hope they were cheap lmao. The hinge broke on me after I think like 4 months of normal use (worn on head, dropped like 2 feet onto carpet sometimes) Basically if you're a gamer just get a hyper x cloud something, I think they were just barely not out or new when I got the Logitech because I still can't figure it out why I didn't get one of those first instead lol, the quality upgrade was immediately and obviously better, in everything from comfort to plastic.

My first mobo was a mistake, the "MSI H170A Gaming Pro" wtf were mobos doing back then they couldn't do faster than DDR4-2133? I think I might of got the cheapest mobo at the time because my 2666 ram was literally too fast for it at time of purchase. Yeah. Idk how I didn't notice or why pcpartpicker didn't warn poor new pc builder me about this obvious bottleneck. Plus I could've gotten like a titanium efficiency (vs gold) power supply for practically the same price and well enough wattage which isn't so bad cause mine is still good but like it hurts with retrospective considering power supply prices nowadays.

I finally upgraded recently and just wanted to rant, so much happier with my new parts. Going from 2133 CL 16 to 3200 CL 14 (with tighter sub timings overall) on the same ram kit on a 5600x vs an Intel 6600 (non x, yeah 6600x went to the same price like as soon as I bought it, yeah I was pissed, no I didn't return it stop judging me) was a huge improvement, and I basically don't gotta worry about ram or cpu for another 3 years probably.

This was longer I expected... I could also mention my first corsair mechanical keyboard... It's not bad, it's just the N key died really quickly and the Logitech G413 is way better and was like $30 cheaper than what I got the corsair for at the time, though the Logitech didn't exist. But yeah that's my hardware experience lol. 

[dean_5234]

16 hours ago, jtmoseley said:

lol a 1050ti is worth like 200 on ebay rn

was abt to say this

18 hours ago, LTT_fanboy said:

it was a fake 3090 ti lololol it was like 200 dollars and listed as a 3090 it was a 1050 ti T^T i got big scammed

technically yes you got scammed as it wasnt a 3090 ti obviously but i guess you could just resell the 1050 ti and make most your money back as theyre super expensive rn

[dean_5234]

19 hours ago, Lakshya Siddhi said:

Comment down below??

I bought this old pc off my friend with an FX 8350 and a 1060 inside, the 1060 (3gb) ram (2x8 g skill ripjaws cl10 1866mhz) and case (dusty inwin 303) were fine but the ssd, cpu, motherboard and cooler were either dead or malfunctioning. He gave me a refund for them at least but I spend wayyy to much time troubleshooting this one lol

[Lakshya Siddhi]

16 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Some "high-end" Antec PSU I bought in 2015. Right after I started building PCs again by putting a gaming unit together for myself. I should have known $47 for 750W was a dumpster fire waiting to happen, even if the PSU did have a blue illuminated ring inside of it that looked cool, but I forgot the rule of PSUs: higher wattage + lower price = boom.

 

There was no boom, but after a couple of weeks, there was a rapid power-cycling when I tried to turn the PC on, and when I was able to get the PC up and running again, one of the PCIe slots was f**ked, any attempt to change the fan curve in Windows froze the system, any attempt to turn on wifi froze the system, and BIOS would instantly freeze if I went into it. I exchanged that unit for a different Antec, then bought the Corsair RM650i I use today.

 

And that other Antec unit? I plugged it into the HP Elite HPe-170f that I was passing on to my then-wife so I could upgrade the GPU and RAM for her. That, for the record, was the best PC I have ever owned. I say "was" because the new Antec unit did the exact same thing, the motherboard was never stable again, and I ended up pulling the CPU, CPU cooler, hard drive and a piece of the case bezel off as mementos of the best PC I'd ever owned, then unceremoniously disposed of the rest of it.

 

I have never bought an Antec product again, and I never will, because that company is a piece of

Did it have some sort of 80 plus certification??

[Vishera]

A FX-8320E and a Gigabyte 970A-DS3P V2

It bottlenecked my HD 7970 (Bottlenecked in games since 2014) even with an overclock of 4.3GHz (The motherboard heavily limited my CPU overclocking)

It was very noticeable in Watchdogs and Assassin's Creed Unity.

 

I could have bought a 2600K with a nice motherboard for the same price.

[Giganthrax]

Last year, after the pcie slots on my secondary system's mobo died, I bought a used motherboard to replace it. Then all the sata slots on that used mobo died a couple weeks later.

 

I still regret the 25 euro I paid for that used mobo. I could've bought drugs with that money.

[aisle9]

12 hours ago, Lakshya Siddhi said:

Did it have some sort of 80 plus certification??

Bronze

80+ is efficiency, not build quality. Logisys makes an 80+ Gold unit.

[Sarra]

I bought an ASUS P2B motherboard. Slot 1, for PII/PIII CPU's.

 

I put a server PIII 650 in it to test it, and it literally blew the CPU core apart.

 

I put a PII in it, got into the BIOS, and realized the VRM was pumping 3.5v into the vcore, instead of the 1.5v or whatever the Slot 1 CPU's needed.

 

I didn't even bother to RMA, refund, or claim anything. I just took it out in my drive way, slammed it down on the ground, drove over it, and threw it in the garbage, and have literally never purchased an ASUS product since then (except by accident).

[FRD]

The power supply I bought for my first gaming PC build ever. It was a MS Tech 650 VAL, a really cheap and bad PSU. Back in 2012 when I bought it I didn't research PSUs and I just chose one that was cheap. I simply thought, it just needs to deliver power and 650W seems enough, even though I need way less.

Turns out I was so wrong, some games really stuttered and had crazy frame drops (1+ sec) while others worked perfectly. I was only on game forums, not any PC forums an I never found the solution to my problem.

It was the PSU all this time. It only got finally replaced by a much, MUCH better unit on my new PC build in last year 2020.

[freeagent]

I thought of another one.. Kind of a double edged lesson here..  OCZ is shit, and dont mess with anything while your pc is powered up.

 

I had an OCZ ram cooler, its 2 fans in a steel bracket that mounted to your dimm clips. 

 

I was messing with mine trying to get it into a better position when a clamp popped free and the cooler dropped straight down onto my brand spankin new Zotac GTX285, the fastest one. A spark and a pop later the card was dead. That card was such a good overclocker. It was so new I didn't know what its limit was. I do know it was literally 500 bucks in the garbage.

[FRD]

Just now, freeagent said:

I thought of another one.. Kind of a double edged lesson here..  OCZ is shit, and dont mess with anything while your pc is powered up.

 

I had an OCZ ram cooler, its 2 fans in a steel bracket that mounted to your dimm clips. 

 

I was messing with mine trying to get it into a better position when a clamp popped free and the cooler dropped straight down onto my brand spankin new Zotac GTX285, the fastest one. A spark and a pop later the card was dead. That card was such a good overclocker. It was so new I didn't know what its limit was. I do know it was literally 500 bucks in the garbage.

That's a really unfortunate story, wow. Just the fact that a ram cooler can do that, I would expect that more from static electricity or something.

OCZ (now Toshiba/Kioxia) is still around, but yeah that haven't been that good over the past years. However, I've had good experiences with them.

I had my OCZ SSD since 2012 and I used it until 2020 and put it back to its box in working state. It wasn't the fastest SSD ever, but solidly build with a metal body, not like most SSDs these days.

[freeagent]

5 minutes ago, FRD said:

That's a really unfortunate story, wow. Just the fact that a ram cooler can do that, I would expect that more from static electricity or something.

OCZ (now Toshiba/Kioxia) is still around, but yeah that haven't been that good over the past years. However, I've had good experiences with them.

I had my OCZ SSD since 2012 and I used it until 2020 and put it back to its box in working state. It wasn't the fastest SSD ever, but solidly build with a metal body, not like most SSDs these days.

I generally had OK luck with them too. I owned a set of their ram that refused to run at SPD of 2.5-3-3-7, would only run CL2 and 3  I had a RevoDrive that was awesome until it died. The cooler was ok, it was metal though, not plastic. And it was my fault for being an idiot. Fix it till its broke.

[CommanderAlex]

I would have to give this award to a laptop cooling pad. They generally suck and are quite noisy. They hardly do anything for airflow and no difference in temperatures and was $25 wasted. I returned it back to Micro Center and can happily use that money elsewhere. 

[Crushermach3]

A motherboard.

 

Was hoping to fix a GPU fan that was randomly revving up and a network card that was behaving strangely. My thought was maybe a capacitor had blown or something was wrong with the PCI-e lanes.

 

I know now it was dumb to just jump straight into buying a new mobo before testing anything. The GPU and network card turned out to be separate concurrent issues. Anyways, the fact that I didn't end up even needing the new mobo wasn't the worst part, because hey, at least I just bought an upgrade to my current mobo so it's not all bad, right? Wrong.

 

Turns out not all sockets of the same type are made equal and the mobo I bought couldn't handle my CPU. Again, I was new, and didn't know about Intel's compatibility checker. I just trusted it would work since PCPartPicker wasn't raising any flags. FML, right?

 

I went on to buy another mobo that does handle my CPU and a beefier power supply (both in current use) before finally realizing the actual problems.

 

All-in-all I've learned a lot from this. I'm now very comfortable with tinkering inside a computer case and more fully know what to research when buying new parts, so you might even say I've come out ahead on this whole venture. Still feels like an L though...

 

I've kept the first replacement mobo in hopes to someday populate it with a compatible CPU and some RAM to use it as a server or something so it's not a total write-off.

 

"Why didn't you return/sell it?" I'm just so done with it by this point I'd rather not bother with the hassle.

[wasab]

Ax wifi card. I installed it for its bluetooth and as back up for ethernet. I never use it since installation.

[JustFarmer]

16 mb of additional ram for a 133 pentium in 1996. It cost me near a 1300 and I didnt find it that useful. Only to play carma on a higher res and fallout 2. Was not worth it.