Question What piece of computer gear did you buy but later regretted?

[SHaines]

I suspect many of us have had the experience of being sucked in by advertising, only to regret the decision immediately. It's not so bad when the investment is low, but sometimes people make really big purchases that proved disastrous.

What component, or piece of computer gear did you buy that you later regretted?

My biggest regret purchase doesn't really work in this context since it was the Intellivision 2 back in the early 80s. I also didn't purchase it, I just pushed my parents to purchase it, which they did, but we were broke, so when choosing between food or the Intellivision 2, I made the wrong call.

However, my next purchase was of a magnetic tape backup storage for my Commodore 64 that I bought off a neighbor who was moving out of the neighborhood. I learned at an early age not to take it on faith that technology for sale is still functional.

Anyhow, hit us with your stories!

 

[punkncat]

I have made a few purchases that I wouldn't make again, wouldn't say "regret" would be the right word, however there is one purchase that stands out for me. The decision I made to go with the product was a direct result of marketing verbiage.

I had been using AMD GPU for a while and was using a 7xxx series with a gig of memory. I recall purchasing some game, probably something Warhammer, lol, and the card wouldn't cut it. Being pretty loud and hot like AMD GPU were at the time, I opted to go with a GTX960 2GB card. Specifically the "Cool and Quiet" marketing they were using at the time.
I had just built in a Mini ITX case, among my first, and the previous card was a blower card. Loud as heck, but it was venting all the air out the back. I put the 960 in and was pretty amazed, right off at how well it worked....for all of five minutes. What Cool and Quiet really meant was the stock fan curve didn't kick on till it was at 80C, and it instantly flooded the inside of the case with hot air, amplified by the gaming going on...thermal shutdown.
Needless to say, less than happy. It was eventually fixed with an aggressive (and noisy) fan curve and some stand offs on a side panel.

 

[Stanley F]

I once bought a CPU based on price. 'nuff said

 

[Deleted member 2720853]

Buying a prebuilt instead of building my PC. My signature says everything. Never again. Ugh, still get nightmares of nonexistent airflow.

 

[GorillaMonsoon]

Mostly stuff that was cheap. Lesson learned.

 

[bignastyid]

Swiftech H240 X2 prestige most I ever spent on a cpu cooler($200).

The "noiseblocker" fans that came with it were very loud.

1st unit developed a leak in the reservoir(swiftech replaced the res), next the fan controller failed(was sent a replacement), then the pump failed(whole unit was replaced).

Next unit the cpu block separated and leaked thought it killed my motherboard(was able to resurrect with some questionable last ditch why not cleaning).

Shelved the replacement(3rd unit) for a couple months(no faith in the unit to function properly) till I decided to use it on the resurrected motherboard(now in a secondary system) after a couple weeks the controller failed again then the pump decided to only startup when it felt like it so cut my losses and binned it.

 

[Phaaze88]

Just 3 on my end.
The i5-3570K for my very first PC build. I definitely should've gone with an i7-3770K.
The several Razer Naga I've gone through. Those things have no durability at all. I should've learned to use macros...
The Phanteks Enthoo Luxe 2/Enthoo 719. It was an impulse buy if anything else. Now it sits in my closet...

 

[vov4ik_il]

200 blank 800mb CDs 20 years ago. They got outdated before I burned half of em 🆒

 

[USAFRet]

900MHz wireless LAN cards, PCMCIA for the laptops.
Netgear, I think.

Those things never worked well.

 

[Mikoooo]

I suspect many of us have had the experience of being sucked in by advertising, only to regret the decision immediately. It's not so bad when the investment is low, but sometimes people make really big purchases that proved disastrous.

What component, or piece of computer gear did you buy that you later regretted?

My biggest regret purchase doesn't really work in this context since it was the Intellivision 2 back in the early 80s. I also didn't purchase it, I just pushed my parents to purchase it, which they did, but we were broke, so when choosing between food or the Intellivision 2, I made the wrong call.

However, my next purchase was of a magnetic tape backup storage for my Commodore 64 that I bought off a neighbor who was moving out of the neighborhood. I learned at an early age not to take it on faith that technology for sale is still functional.

Anyhow, hit us with your stories!

Probaly my gtx 1050ti, Im new to bvuilding pc's but started building one and saw the price had dropped from roughly 200 to around 120, so I bought it and instantly regret it, the 1080 ti dropped in price 2 weeks after and im now sat here stuck with under 250 fps on most games

 

[grandfaloon]

The original Surface basic, it sucked from day one, it hasn't broken, but is not powerful or adaptable.

 

[McL3g3nd]

Mine is a bit of a 2 for 1, as one bad decision led to the other.... At the end of the 90s and with little to no knowledge of computers I bough a HP pavillion 6000 series, not too sure of exact specs however I think it was rocking a whopping 600mhz cpu. Alas that was my 1st mistake, after being sold on how upgradeable it was I later bought a geforce4 mx200 only to find my Pavillion had no AGP slot.... Whoops there is mistake number 2! Well after that and some insight into how PCs work I hit ebuyer and built my own athlon xp 1800 based beast with a geforce ti4200. It was a marked improvement! 😂

 

[TK31]

I bought a 4GB RX480 instead of the 8GB card to save money. It bottlenecked very quickly due to the 4GB

 

[madmatt30]

I bought an Oric 1 back in the day (well parents did for Christmas) because the spectrum had sold out everywhere.

It was a good machine but lacking software, kept it nearly 3 months then returned it and swapped for a spectrum.

Back in the day before the Internet returns etc to shops were dead easy.

Kind of had a free 3 month trial.

 

[gutsygoat]

I bought a 1050 ti for 180....RX 570 and 80s were about the same price. I cry every day.

 

[wogfor]

Bought a Gigabyte GTX 1060 that only had 3GB of RAM. It was on a closeout. Worked ok, but my 1660 beat the pants of of it for not that much more money...

My other regret was buying a couple of different pre-builts and then tossing money at them to try and improve performance. Spent less money on just building my own custom system.

 

[Shadowclash10]

My current monitor . Look, I love my current AOC 1440p 144hz VA curved 27" - and I got it for ~$230 , but I wish I had spent a few hundred more on it, to get a higher end IPS or smth. I mean, you look at your computer monitor basically all the time while using your PC.

 

[Flayed]

I pre ordered a Geforce FX 5800 before all the reviews came out - Doh!
A Radeon 5770 that was really underpowered

 

[bit_user]

Three that come to mind:

• Replacing a Radeon HD X1350 with X1650. The first was decent and quiet. The replacement was noisy and didn't seem appreciably faster. I forget if I swapped the first card back in, before I eventually upgraded to a 4650 (another good card, if not terribly fast).
• Getting a dual-core Phenom II, instead of quad-core. They were both very cheap, at the time.
• Getting a sub-standard heatsink/fan that I ended up replacing before ever using.

Other than that, I have very few regrets. Probably because:

• I always try to do adequate (often excessive) investigation, before buying.
• Spending a little more on decent-quality parts helps.
• I never buy a new part in the first couple months. I always wait for customer reviews to appear and for early problems to get sorted out.
• I'm usually able to wait years, until the right part comes out.

 

[Steven84]

Back in 2001 I bought a PC from Time. On paper it was incredible and for about 10 minutes it was. It was sent back to get fixed which did nothing to fix it. Was put in the bin after a year.

 

[Akachibisaru]

Hi everyone, It has been a long time since I built a rig . I got sidelined into using laptops and android devices. Last one I built was running Win. 2000. I paid $301 for the new Athlon when they just hit the 1 gig mark. This was one of the CPU's that you could unlock by drawing a carbon trace with a #2 pencil. I could easily get over 1.2 gig with air cooling. It went for about 3 months before the magic smoke came out. That is when I found out my supplier was selling grey market CPU's. I got ahold of guy at AMD who said he wasn't supposed to but sent me a replacement. He sent me a 850 Mhz. I believe that ended up being overclockable to over 1100! Then there was the time I got the Voodo 3 graphics card. Right before they went tits up. CompUSA had alot of nearly obsolete stuff . The Imation Zip drive 250mb was another . I COULD GO ON! I think back to when it all began with the purchase of that nifty Commodore Vic 20! No longer have it but if anyone needs a manual for one hit me up.

 

[Asif570]

Back in 2018 when i upgraded my pc I brought intel core i3-7100. 2 days later I spent the whole day regretting, if i just browsed a little more then i could have know about intel core i3 -8100. The difference in price were just a few dollars. Since then it became a bit of bottle neck for my pc.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Msi mech oc rx5700. Not a great cooler and performance is more than i need.

I could have bought a 1660 super with a really good cooler and still had ample performance, lower power draw, and less noise.

 

[sizzling]

Razer Tiamat 7.1 and high end soundcard to run them. Still had poor surround sound positioning and audio quality worse than a £50 headset.

 

[Flayed]

A used Vega 56 which died after 6 months or so