What component of your computer fails most often?

[SoF]

I am not sure why but I lost a lot memory lately in all day systems. My GF's rig killed 2x1 GB ddr after running 2 years, my own now killed 1x 2GB as well as 2x1GB ddr2 within 2 years and last year I lost a tripple kit hyper during benching.

I am lucky with HDDs and GPUs for the past 5 years. Only one SSD decided to die, but there was no important data on it.
Mobo sometimes fail, but mainly due to my benching under LN2 or DICE...killed a TP45HP and RIIE far below -60°C so I must blame myself not the manufactures for that

 

[panchoman]

hopefully this poll shows that its neccessary to use quality psu's...

 

[KieX]

Back in P45 days it was always Asus mobo failures and EVGA with X58. After those it's the Skythe fans, really good but 50% chance of failure so far.

 

[overclocking101]

i have had more motherboards die then anything else but cpu's is a close 3rd gpu's is 2nd

 

[DanishDevil]

At the shop I work at, we replace a lot of HDDs and PSUs. A decent amount of motherboards as well. And of course laptop keyboards and displays. Almost all of them seem to be related to misuse, carelessness, or a badly assembled computer (underpowered cheapo PSU, no airflow over the HDD, too much dust to get rid of without causing everyone's allergies to flare up, and of course dropping laptops). I'd say about 90% of the problems we run into hardware-wise would be solved if the machines were taken care of properly.

 

[Kursah]

I've seen RAM fail more than anything, GPU's being 2nd. Though my memory failures are almost all from the DDR2 era, one in DDR1 and I don't have a DDR3 setup yet.

I checked all items that failed one or more, but after this thread peters out...you should do one with a failure of 2+. I think that'll show the more common failures better for those that are curious. I've had one of almost everything on your list fail on me at one point or another. Though on 2 or more, I'd be limited to Memory and MB for my personal rigs.

 

[sliderider]

I'm curious which component tends to cause the most problems for people that work on computers.

Windows.

 

[chevy350]

I've only really killed one kind, ram, Crucial Ballistix line both DDR and DDR2 , not sure why they died since they were always run at spec but stranger things have happened lol.

 

[xBruce88x]

Emachines... (all components equally fail), cheap powersupplies, memory, laptop hard drives and optical drives....

my brother who punches his laptop's screen b/c he's mad it won't load something...

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

For me it's mostly low profile graphics cards with weak little blowers and cpu fans. My pothead customers have the weirdest dust. I swear this one guy had some steel wool thing going on, fan's couldn't even be spun by hand.

 

[timta2]

My main problem over the years has been bad or dying hard drives, but they seem to be getting more reliable in more recent years. Hard drives sucked in the 80's and 90's. (I'm old, hehe). Have dealt with some bad memory here and there too.

 

[Melvis]

For me, with looking after this town with there computer issues this is what i have found to die the most for me, in order.

RAM
PSU
HDD
Optical Drive
Mobo

The rest seem to be ok.

 

[sliderider]

Emachines... (all components equally fail), cheap powersupplies, memory, laptop hard drives and optical drives....

my brother who punches his laptop's screen b/c he's mad it won't load something...

What do you expect from a $200 desktop? I don't even bother with disposable computers from any of the mass marketers anymore. I'd rather build my own with the level of upgradability and expandability that I want instead of having my options limited by a company that wants to keep me buying new computers year after year.

 

[jellyrole]

My OZX Onyx SSD died, the Agility they sent me plays hide and seek sometimes and is on its way out.

 

[The Von Matrices]

My motherboards have always been the most failure-prone component. Processors are the most stable, by far.

 

[xBruce88x]

What do you expect from a $200 desktop? I don't even bother with disposable computers from any of the mass marketers anymore. I'd rather build my own with the level of upgradability and expandability that I want instead of having my options limited by a company that wants to keep me buying new computers year after year.

I don't buy em... I fix em for the poor souls that do.

 

[hellrazor]

The operating system, above ALL. It usually causes problems in other components.

 

[Josh154]

I'd say ram and power supplys. So many people cheap out on power supply's and then they randomely go bad along with PSU's from prebuilts.

RAM i've had go out many times on me in my laptop. No overclocking or anything either, it just finds a way to fail for no reason.

 

[scaminatrix]

RAM and HDD's. Always. Around the winter, I seem to always be replacing people's RAM. One of my mates lives in a crappy flat, and one time he bought his rig to me to fix and there was condensation on the CMOS battery and the RAM heatspreaders!!!
The same friend bought his rig to me another time, and I found a dead spider stuck to the bottom of his HDD, on the circuit board!!!

 

[Rexter]

Nothing really, it gets increasingly rare for anything to fail on me. I think for two reasons: Ive gotten better at buying quality stuff, and products in general are of higher quality.

BUT if i should say what has failed me the most over the many years ive built pc's, it has to be ram. Thats the part i have replaced the most.

 

[R3DF13LD]

Hdd's n graphics 2 years and now motherboards but it's already 5 years i guess it's dat time already

 

[erixx]

since a couple of years ODD are shitty (and so cheap) they fail from day one (or are the discs worse?)

But a HDD failure is second most frequent and first most annoying!