What is your biggest loss on a bit of Tech?

[Tehkast]

I remember buying a Dell XPS M1730 maybe 2010 time had SLI GPU thing was a total brick not portable at all but did game well for the time etc.

 

Was first job not paying rent etc so more money then brain cells. 

 

Brought this thing nearly £2000

 

Less then 3-4 years later had some Kernal issue with the GPU think it overheated couldn't figure it out and didn't occur to me to take to a repair shop as just wanted out as was so upset it died.

 

Remember selling on Ebay for maybe £250 at most as parts.

 

Still kinda makes me sore and sad that was a beast laptop and sold for %10 less then 5 years later.

 

What is the biggest loss in tech that still upsets you a wee bit?

[8tg]

When covid started I lost my job and had to ditch most of my hardware collection, fast, and leave. A few notable items

1) a dfi lanparty NF2 ultra B, complete in box, with a hard vrm mod for liquid nitrogen overclocking, which I practically gave away as a bonus to a person buying a few gpus from me because they knew what it was and I wouldn’t have to just throw it out 

2) most of my old school cards including a voodoo, voodoo 2, voodoo 3 3000, banshee, etc, all of which I couldn’t sell fast enough so they went to a guy buying my evga geforce4 ti 4600 for $100
and the one that hurt the most

3) an entire Tandy 1000sx with its matching monitor and peripherals, two 5.25” floppy drives I restored myself, an era 20mb hard drive, ega card, and a whole pile of era dos software on floppy, which got left behind because I couldn’t sell it quick and I couldn’t bring it with me

 

my collection now is a lot larger and has a lot more cool pieces but man, some of that stuff I will likely never get back or will just never see one again, I haven’t seen an evga acs2 4600 since, I have a creative GeForce 4 ti 4600 now but it’s not the same thing 

[ToboRobot]

bought my first watercooling setup including a special Cathar water block. 

it leaked and killed my GPU.

Had to sell the water cooling to buy a new GPU.

[TVwazhere]

Not mine but...

[da na]

Oh god... XPS M1730.

I'm an old hardware collector and my three biggest regrets are all XPS laptops: M2010, M1710, and M1530.

XPS M2010 is a complete piece of trash. It features the only combination worse than orange juice and toothpaste: Proprietary parts that are also unreliable. Optical drive is near impossible to find a replacement for, and the GPU is $160+ for a working replacement - and both are known to break frequently. Finding good batteries for it will also be a few hundred dollars, since the freakin keyboard needs a battery connected to even work in the first place. 

XPS M1710, similar situation. Only a few compatible GPUs since Dell didn't use the standard MXM slot. Original 7950 Go GTX died within a week of me getting the laptop used, had to buy a Quadro card.

M1530, almost tripled the price I paid for the laptop with a motherboard replacement, again a dead GPU.

 

ATI 4870 X2 was another huge regret. Paid over a hundred for a card that was immediately killed by the motherboard, which I didn't know was bad at the time. Same board was later struck down by an exploding soundcard, that also cost me a fair bit but was a funny bit of retribution.

[AbydosOne]

6 minutes ago, Tehkast said:

What is the biggest loss in tech that still upsets you a wee bit?

I went through three different Windows tablets over a 5-6 year span before I gave up on the concept and bought a convertible laptop.

1. Dell Venue 8 Pro ($200-ish): Win8 on 2GB of RAM was horrible. Screen got really discolored for some reason.
2. Microsoft Surface Pro 2 ($500-ish used): the battery management died so it always reported a full battery.
3. Asus Transformer T102HA ($300-ish): the CMOS battery died, so the clock wouldn't stay synchronized when it went to "sleep".

[8tg]

29 minutes ago, da na said:

Oh god... XPS M1730.

I'm an old hardware collector and my three biggest regrets are all XPS laptops: M2010, M1710, and M1530.

XPS M2010 is a complete piece of trash. It features the only combination worse than orange juice and toothpaste: Proprietary parts that are also unreliable. Optical drive is near impossible to find a replacement for, and the GPU is $160+ for a working replacement - and both are known to break frequently. Finding good batteries for it will also be a few hundred dollars, since the freakin keyboard needs a battery connected to even work in the first place. 

XPS M1710, similar situation. Only a few compatible GPUs since Dell didn't use the standard MXM slot. Original 7950 Go GTX died within a week of me getting the laptop used, had to buy a Quadro card.

M1530, almost tripled the price I paid for the laptop with a motherboard replacement, again a dead GPU.

 

ATI 4870 X2 was another huge regret. Paid over a hundred for a card that was immediately killed by the motherboard, which I didn't know was bad at the time. Same board was later struck down by an exploding soundcard, that also cost me a fair bit but was a funny bit of retribution.

Oh man am I in that boat 

thinkpad 701c, and not just any 701c, one of the I think 10 or so that existed with an amd x-5 processor 

And right alongside it, an asus top 4870x2

both of which were a constant pain in my ass and I’m glad they’re long gone 

 

context of a 701c, if you’re a thinkpad nerd out there, or maybe you just want to own the cool butterfly keyboard laptop, straight up dont

these machines are rare because they try to kill themselves constantly, they were incredibly popular laptops but there’s none left because here’s the average 701c’s lifespan

1) businessman gets a laptop in 1995 or 1996

2) it’s woefully underpowered even then, as everyone transitioned from windows 3.1 to windows 95

3) by 1999 it’s useless and gets put in storage somewhere 

4) by 2005 it’s battery has violently ejected it’s contents into the chassis, as there’s no real barrier between the multilayer motherboard and the battery’s point of weakness

5) in 2009 it’s discovered, it’s turned into a turquoise battery acid encrusted crystal, any non acid coated surfaces have turned into goo because it has a rubberized coating 

6) the machine is thrown away

 

and suddenly they’re rare, and now any example out there is usually just one stored without a battery, but there’s other problems 

1) they’re still rubberized, they attract dust and fingerprints and you can’t get them off without fire or removing the entire rubberized coating, and it doesn’t peel, it melds into the plastics

2) the plastics are extremely brittle, you can shatter a 701c in your hands with minimal effort, it also means you can’t take them apart without damage because every plastic clip and pressure fit item like the light pipes for the status LEDs will shatter immediately 

3) even after all that, they’re stupidly complex inside and their power boards tend to need recapping, and they will kill the entire rest of the system at random if not recapped 

 

fuck the 701c, it’s a piece of thinkpad history that deserves to be in the trash, I paid way too god damn much money for the rarest of 701c’s to exist with the x5 from the factory in it, and as it degraded further, it just kept breaking on me, and I basically ripped the board out to sell to some other idiot who would make an attempt to repair their 701c, knowing full well that opening one is a death sentence for the chassis

 

[da na]

11 minutes ago, 8tg said:

Oh man am I in that boat 

thinkpad 701c, and not just any 701c, one of the I think 10 or so that existed with an amd x-5 processor 

And right alongside it, an asus top 4870x2

both of which were a constant pain in my ass and I’m glad they’re long gone 

 

context of a 701c, if you’re a thinkpad nerd out there, or maybe you just want to own the cool butterfly keyboard laptop, straight up dont

these machines are rare because they try to kill themselves constantly, they were incredibly popular laptops but there’s none left because here’s the average 701c’s lifespan

1) businessman gets a laptop in 1995 or 1996

2) it’s woefully underpowered even then, as everyone transitioned from windows 3.1 to windows 95

3) by 1999 it’s useless and gets put in storage somewhere 

4) by 2005 it’s battery has violently ejected it’s contents into the chassis, as there’s no real barrier between the multilayer motherboard and the battery’s point of weakness

5) in 2009 it’s discovered, it’s turned into a turquoise battery acid encrusted crystal, any non acid coated surfaces have turned into goo because it has a rubberized coating 

6) the machine is thrown away

 

and suddenly they’re rare, and now any example out there is usually just one stored without a battery, but there’s other problems 

1) they’re still rubberized, they attract dust and fingerprints and you can’t get them off without fire or removing the entire rubberized coating, and it doesn’t peel, it melds into the plastics

2) the plastics are extremely brittle, you can shatter a 701c in your hands with minimal effort, it also means you can’t take them apart without damage because every plastic clip and pressure fit item like the light pipes for the status LEDs will shatter immediately 

3) even after all that, they’re stupidly complex inside and their power boards tend to need recapping, and they will kill the entire rest of the system at random if not recapped 

 

fuck the 701c, it’s a piece of thinkpad history that deserves to be in the trash, I paid way too god damn much money for the rarest of 701c’s to exist with the x5 from the factory in it, and as it degraded further, it just kept breaking on me, and I basically ripped the board out to sell to some other idiot who would make an attempt to repair their 701c, knowing full well that opening one is a death sentence for the chassis

 

Took me a little while to accept that some things just can't be saved. That realization started to hit with the Dell XPS laptops. There will be literally no way to keep them alive once all the new-old-stock Quadro FX 1500 cards dry up from dusty warehouse shelves.

My favorite laptops on the planet, the HP Pavilion series (NOT the trashy new ones, the '06-09 era where they were amazing) also suffer from bad GPU solder on the models with GeForce graphics and/or nForce chipsets. The laptop can be repaired by swapping in an Intel GMA-based motherboard, but that's a whole half of a product line being wiped from history. 

[da na]

24 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

I went through three different Windows tablets over a 5-6 year span before I gave up on the concept and bought a convertible laptop.

1. Dell Venue 8 Pro ($200-ish): Win8 on 2GB of RAM was horrible. Screen got really discolored for some reason.
2. Microsoft Surface Pro 2 ($500-ish used): the battery management died so it always reported a full battery.
3. Asus Transformer T102HA ($300-ish): the CMOS battery died, so the clock wouldn't stay synchronized when it went to "sleep".

How on earth do I have a Windows XP tablet from 2006 that works better than those? 
4GB RAM, 1680x1050 display, real Wacom pen digitizer, and a Surface-style keyboard dock. 

Always baffling when something is made right, and then subsequent attempts to do the literal exact same thing are awful.

[kodokuj]

So I got a long one for you.

I also do mention parts even when I don't need to, cause I just like giving specifics.

 

I had a laptop that I had off eBay that was amazing. It ran everything I played AMAZING! God of War on Original settings, Doom 2016 on Ultra, Minecraft with shaders, Fortnite on Epic (no RT)!

 

Had it for a few months at this point. It came with 16GB of DDR4L at 2133MHz, and while editing I noticed it was at high usage so I ordered another (matching) 16GB stick. When I posted a picture like "ya girl of a ram upgrade" and someone told me something like "your ram speed is pretty low, you should oc it" and I was NOT ready for that task.

 

It failed to oc and didn't go back, so when trying to take out the CMOS I ripped the entire housing off. Effectively killing the entire laptop.

I took out the 512GB SSD and the ram, but they were basically useless. I lost a great laptop. This was December 2023 so it's compared to modern stuff, but in my eyes it was amazing. She was rocking an i7-6700MQ and a GTX 970M. In my defence, it was a very weird CMOS housing, if it was the one that's on normal motherboards I'd have been able to fix it.

 

Then I went onto this for a bit of old parts we had.

She was rocking an AMD A6-3600, 16GB or DDR3, rocking the integrated graphics, running off a 1TB 7200RPM laptop hard drive. I ordered a GTX 650 Ti (EVGA's 1GB model) on eBay for about $20 and threw it in.

 

Eventually scored a case and power supply for $20 so I could use the other super old motherboard + cpu we had.

Swapped to an AMD Athlon X4 760K.

 

Then my step father upgraded to in around March. He got a Ryzen 7 7700X, 7800XT... but that's not the important part, because I got his old parts!

 

I received his AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and GTX 1660 Ti system! I was able to use my 512GB SSD. 
But Julia, this has a happy ending. Nope!

 

About a week ago I had to ditch the GTX 1660 Ti that was dying and went to an AMD Radeon R9 380X my stepdad has in his old old PC he just as a work PC. An old Ryzen 3 1200 and that 380X from earlier. So we swapped since all his needs to do is output a display. 

 

Sadly the 380X does not hold up well, no more shaders in Minecraft, Fortnite has to run on Performance Mode due to lack of modern drivers, and recording for YouTube is gonna be scuffed due to an old AMD encoder. 

 

Moral of the story, I shouldn't handle computers.

 

[aggie113]

Bought my RTX 3080 graphics card Dec of '21.  Got tired of waiting years for things to return to normal and decided I was tired of gaming on my mobile GTX 1060 laptop.  I got one on Newegg for $1800.  If that wasn't bad enough, that order was canceled and I then got one for the next cheapest which was $1950.  Perfect timing. 

 

I can honestly say there was no game I couldn't have waited two months to play...

Edit:  Upgraded to RTX 4090 this week and giving my nephew my old 3080, so for sure my biggest loss on tech so far

Edited 14 hours ago by aggie113
moo cow

[Motifator]

No idea what to pick... but here goes some off my head,

A blown Glow Master EL34 hi-fi tube amp for passive speakers

DFI X38 Lanparty smoked with a short.

Sabretooth Asus board with i7 3820 and Tagan 1200W PSU shorted

HD 2900 XT burned

GTX 285 cooked and toasted

i9 7900X delid job going drunk and demolishing the whole thing, throwing it into trash

Taking a literal hammer to a GTX 1080 Ti, murdering the screen outputs and the rear blower end with the whole shell... drunk

Giving my mom the sticks to my classic Roland Drum Pad controller, with her murdering the unit thanks to me touching buttons to shut the thing off...

Last but not the least, I sell my stuff always for dirt cheap.

Yeah, I'm apathetic sometimes... lol.

[Kisai]

Realistically, 

 

Everything that is a big loss tends to be either

a) bleeding edge (never buy high end parts like i9's or xx90 GPU's upon release), I've bought one xx90, and only when it was half the price it was a few weeks earlier. I refuse to buy the i9's because they essentially need liquid coolers. Don't liquid cool unless you are going all-out on high end parts.

 

b) obscure (one of the reasons why I won't buy a VR HMD, they all universally suck at present, and will continue to do so because people just don't want VR until there is a must-have app, and all we keep getting are less capable ugly re-inventions of second life. I basically noped the hell out of VR.

 

c) not capable of what's advertised. PDA's, I swear Microsoft abandoned this market instead of transforming it into a smartphone and basically ceded the entire smartphone development to Apple. I had three. I've less smart phones, primarily because of this burn and why I won't touch Android. Give me something that lasts 7 years, or I'll just hypermile whatever I use.

 

So in terms of "lost money" every single laptop.  Do not buy laptops if you want to play games. Do not buy laptops if you need a "Desktop replacement" they universally suck and are getting worse in every way. If you need a laptop for portability reasons that is one thing, but at home, and at work you should have a desktop tower, or even a SFF rather than a laptop.

 

Why are laptops terrible:

a) laptops used as desktop replacements last 18 months

b) ultrabook designs have exceptionally low life spans, and are noisy as hell.

c) They are typically twice as expensive as a desktop for the same performance.

 

An overengineered desktop will last you 10 years if you want it to. A laptop's life is dictated by it's battery and it's cooling fans. Until we get to a point where batteries can be removed ad-hoc and the laptop remains usable off a USB-C power source/docking station, laptops are poor investments.

[Average Nerd]

Bought 2 voltage regulators for 80€ each, not realizing that there are literally no affordable power supplies that can take full advantage of them.

Now they each run a 400W 60V power supply, while they could take up to a 750W 60V PSU each, I could've saved a lot of money if I went with lower power regulators.

The manual also failed to mention that you MUST use a switch mode PSU, because a mains transformer based PSU will destroy the regulator (I got new regulators under warranty, but had to buy the 60V 400W PSUs I mentioned before to use them).

[Tehkast]

Actually remember another time got bent over.

 

Again around 2009 time first time building a full new build PC brought 2 5790 Radeon Black cards think was £600 each and ran in Crossfire.

 

the amount of issues with that crap was insane terrible drivers needed to use ports in specific order to even boot.

 

Within a year sold em at a loss of maybe £400 loss on each of them. Got a GTX680 instead works to this day.

 

Never going team red again for GPU

[emothxughts]

I bought a used RX 580 in Sept 2021 for about MYR1300 (~USD 275, those were the dark days of GPU scalping). It blackscreened a lot. Undervolting it and carefully uninstalling & reinstalling drivers helped reduce the chances of a black screen a bit, but it still happened way too often for comfort, compared to my previous working RX 550. Then one day it started blackscreening under any load at all. Ended up selling the waste of sand for parts for a mere MYR50 (~USD 11).

 

I also bought another used GPU, the RX 5600 XT. It too blackscreened a lot though in a different way from the RX 580 (check my profile, my earliest posts in this forum were about this cursed card). Sold it for parts too, for MYR 150 (~USD 32).

[atxcyclist]

I bought a 2020 Asus G14, on the recommendation of every tech channel and magazine review out there saying it was ‘the best’ compact gaming laptop. Lies. Driver problems, horrible battery life, it ships with soldered ram in single channel, and it had a pretty low-end small SSD in it. Upgraded it with an 8GB stick to get 2x8GB, put a better and larger NVMe drive in there, and did a fresh Windows install with all the updated drivers from Asus; still unreliable. 
 

It’s been sitting in a closet with a fresh ‘out of the box’ install of Windows 10 for over a year as I’ve tried to sell it, and no one wants it even with the upgrades and asking only $550 for it. Absolute waste of money and time, and I’ll never buy a Windows laptop again if this is supposed to be ‘the best’ in the consumer market.
 

I bought a maxed-out 13” Apple-refurbished M2 MacBook Pro for daily portable computing, and I couldn’t be happier; I need something that works more than gaming ability, though the MacBook plays Minecraft and VMs Windows just fine for some older titles. It also has extremely good battery life.