Brand loyalty for the PC Enthusiast

[Dbiggs9]

Me it's all about the brand and the people behind it. I always find myself Buying the same brands for every build. Intel cpu's started with a E6400>Q6600>I7 870x2 >i7 930(RMA was great I killed that chip)> 990x 5960x. I did buy 1 AMD PII 965BE with a Gigabye 870 Motherboard only because I seen so many people rave about them here on TPU.
Motherboards. always EVGA Started with a 775 socket 680i that my failed psu killed caught on fire. EVGA replaced it. so every motherboard from that day was EVGA 780i P55 FTW200 x2 X58 Class X99 Class.
Video Cards Was XFX till I needed a RMA they refused because I could not find my receipt XFX8600GT that blew its caps after 1yr rma guy was a asshole to. So I went to EVGA 9800gt GTX260 GTX460 GTX560ti GTX660Ti GTX970.
Cases and Psu is Antec for me I have 2 1200cases with 1200watts Antec psu. 2 Antec 900 with Antec 750watts psu.
Memory is always Gskills I own 18 sticks.
Hard drives is Seagate(they replace the fire HDD) and Crucial SSD's.

My do not buy list is. XFX(refused rma)Update XFX made this right!
ASUS(bad/slow rma), Thermaltake(Fire short killed my build refused rma).

So this Intel Green Team fanboy will always buy from them even if the cost is higher for worst performance..

So why do you guys buy the brands you do?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Power Supply: Enermax
Case: Cooler Master
Fan (short life): Mass Cool
Fan (long life): Rexus/Panaflo
Motherboard: MSI
Processor: Intel (only because AMD is way behind)
Memory: Kingston
Video: PowerColor Radeon
HDD: Seagate
SATA controller: High-Point
UPS: CyberPower
Speakers: Klipsch
KVM: StarTech

Why? Because quality.

 

[INSTG8R]

Sapphire since my 9800(1900XTX+Master Card, 2900XT, 4870, 5870 current 7970), Abit until they folded, Seasonic for PSU

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

I have been loyal to Amd and Ati since the K6-2 days. As afr as actual brand now of gpu, I lean towards XFX. I have several Visiontek cards which work great. Just the fans die so fast on them. Also Out of 2 Rma's with xfx ( 1 fan and one gpu) both have went great. Motherboards I lean towards Gigabyte. I have never had any issues with them. Psu's it's Corsair hands down. And Gskill for memory.

 

[Maban]

I don't really understand brand loyalty. Why wouldn't I shop around for the best fit? I won't buy an AMD because it doesn't perform as well, not because I prefer Intel. I bought an EVGA motherboard because it was $7. I bought a Razer Naga because it had the best configuration for me at the time, etc.

I also don't understand most do not buy lists. It seems like most of the time persons refuse to buy something after either one failure or something that was likely their own fault.

 

[newtekie1]

Power Supply: Corsair or Seasonic because quality, and I'll prefer Corsair because when my dual-GTX470s melted the 24-Pin connector(bad motherboard design, not Corsair's fault) they shipped me two HX850s in replacement for 1, their customer service is just bad ass.
Case: Corsair because I like their designs or NZXT again because I like their designs and they are really inexpensive for what you get.
Fan: Delta because quality.
Motherboard: ASUS or AsRock leaning towards AsRock more lately again because quality and bang for the buck.
Processor: Intel or AMD depending on the budget. If I'm throwing $250+ at the CPU, I'm going Intel, any less and I'm going AMD.
Memory: Any well known brand. I currently run Corsair, Crucial, G.Skill, Kingston, and PNY.
Video Card: Any well known brand except EVGA(See below for reason)
Hard Drive: Seagate because I just can't trust WD's inexpensive drives at this point. I've got a stack of dead/dying WD Blues on my desk as well as a HGST in a laptop that died and it was manufactured in July-2014 and I bought a replacement HGST drive and it came in this week with SMART errors right out of the box.
SSD: Any of the well known brands.

Companies I won't buy from ever again:

Antec: Got hit hard buy the SmartPower garbage units. Was using them in customer builds only to have them all fail in under 2 years, most in under a year, and 4 of the failures took out every component that ran on +12v in the system, even the fans. Antec would only warranty the PSU, not the parts they killed, and their warranty process for the units was to fax, yes FAX, the RMA form along with my the invoice to them.
EVGA: Lets face it, their customer support has sunk to garbage levels and they've resorted to stupid shit like advertising 3 year warranty periods but only honoring them if you register the product within 30 days of purchase. Had them reject two RMAs on motherboards because I didn't register them in 30 days, so EVGA claimed they only had a 1 year warranty. I looked on the warranty page in the manual and sure enough is says in really really fine print at the bottom that the product must be registered in 30 days to receive the full warranty, if it isn't registered the product is only covered by a 1 year warranty. Why EVGA?!? You used to be so good! Oh, and they fired their motherboard BIOS team, had the GPU BIOS team start writing for the motherboards, which left my P55 FTW 200 with nerfed front USB ports and they never released an updated BIOS to fix it.
LG: Bought an external Blu-Ray burner, it died in 3 months, went through their RMA process, sent the drive in...then nothing. No response to emails, any number I find either is disconnected or never gets answered.

 

[eidairaman1]

Amd
Sapphire
Gskill
Antec
Seasonic
Samsung
Seagate
Creative Labs

Mobo choice is dependent on reliability

 

[15th Warlock]

Intel
Asus
EVGA
Nvidia
AMD (Ati)
MSI
Silverstone
Corsair
Creative
GSkill
EK
Swiftech

 

[Dbiggs9]

EVGA: Lets face it, their customer support has sunk to garbage levels and they've resorted to stupid shit like advertising 3 year warranty periods but only honoring them if you register the product within 30 days of purchase. Had them reject two RMAs on motherboards because I didn't register them in 30 days, so EVGA claimed they only had a 1 year warranty. I looked on the warranty page in the manual and sure enough is says in really really fine print at the bottom that the product must be registered in 30 days to receive the full warranty, if it isn't registered the product is only covered by a 1 year warranty. Why EVGA?!? You used to be so good! Oh, and they fired their motherboard BIOS team, had the GPU BIOS team start writing for the motherboards, which left my P55 FTW 200 with nerfed front USB ports and they never released an updated BIOS to fix it.

Yes i agree with the EVGA warranty. I miss the -A1, -A2, -A3, -A4, -AR days.

 

[Frick]

Whatever gives me the best bang for the buck. Brand loyalty never made much sense to me.

 

[the54thvoid]

Brand loyalty is a philosophy. You should purchase whatever best suits your needs. It's great if a single manufacturer stays on top but it doesn't stay static in tech.
If your loyalty to a once great brand means you miss up and coming or newly established companies, loyalty stops being a reward and becomes a noose.
In capitalism, brand loyalty is nothing more than marketing.

 

[Jetster]

I have some brand loyalty to a point. I will jump ship in a heart beat if the opportunity arises on a great deal.

Wont buy again:
XFX, Powercolor, the only rebate Ive never gotten back was from Powercolor and the people at XFX are tools.

Prefer Brands:
Gigabyte
Sapphire
EVGA
Intel of course
ASUS
Dell
Silverstone
GSkill
Corsair
Seagate
Samsung
Seasonic

Newegg, I have a premium account i bought when it was on sale for $30. Love them and they have saved my bacon more then one time. Including refunding on a refurbished part

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Yes i agree with the EVGA warranty. I miss the -A1, -A2, -A3, -A4, -AR days.

I got screwed by the same thing Newtekie1 did and not only did I stop buying EVGA, I stopped buying NVIDIA. I don't regret it. US support for Sapphire is garbage though. That's really the only brand of video cards I won't buy anymore.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

meh Sapphire RMA you can usually force Newegg to deal with it from what I remember the Sapphire site says to go through retailer while Newegg says to go through Sapphire I simply used a screenshot of sapphire site. and Newegg gave me full refund via store credit once they recieved the card so I had new gpus in 6 days.

Some brands seem terrible at first until you find out how to work with the systems in place. for RMA I have found Sapphire tech the easiest in the past due to the above reason. at least for AMD GPUs

 

[FordGT90Concept]

They sent me a card with unstable BIOS...twice...and several months apart. That puts them squarely on the do-not-buy list. I ended up using ATI Flash to put reference BIOS on it after it was outside of warranty to fix it for good. If the internet does a better job at servicing their cards than Sapphire, Sapphire doesn't deserve mine nor anyone's business.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Like i said I forced newegg to handle RMAs always used Sapphire cards

4870x2 / 5850 x2 / 6970 x2 etc everytime the cards eventually failed (pushed to hard / power surge / lightning storm / PSU exploding) so I contact newegg complain they tell me check with sapphire check their website says warranties go through retailer screenshot submit newegg sends me a UPS label cards sent out got full refund via store credit bought new gpus. Did this on both the 4870x2 and 2x 6970s. 5850s were great never had issues. I agree RMA THROUGHT Sapphire is a joke. But as long as you remember to force issue via retailer it then depends on the retailer.

 

[de.das.dude]

the only thing i am loyal to is my wallet :3
the better performance for my budget, the more ill lean towards that.

but still, i have a sort of baseless faith in Corsair.

 

[hat]

At one time I spent a lot of time reading everything here. This was during the days everyone had socket 775 or AM2. At that time I did have a mental list of brands that were known good/known bad. Since then so much has changed... some companies aren't around anymore, some that were good suck, some that sucked are now good, and so on. Anymore if I'm going to buy something I do the research right then and there on what's good and what's bad and find the best deal that works with my budget and my needs.

 

[adulaamin]

I usually go for the brand which offers the best bang-for-buck (especially when it comes to video cards) but if I had the extra cash, there are brands that I prefer to buy from.

PSU - Seasonic/Corsair
RAM - G-Skill/Kingston
SSD/HDD - Western Digital/Crucial/OCZ (The OCZ SSDs I've used have never failed on me)
Motherboard - My last 3 motherboards and the current one that I'm using is from Asus but I think I'll be switching over to another brand on my next build. Most probably MSI/AsRock. My reason? Asus RMA service is too slow/unreliable.
Video Card - MSI/Gigabyte for cards with aftermarket coolers. For cards with reference coolers I go for which brand is priced the cheapest.
Chassis - Fractal Design/Corsair
Mouse/Keyboard - Logitech/Corsair.

 

[SK-1]

Antec
MSI
Intel
PowerColor
Logitech
Gigabyte
AMD/ATI
Corsair
Crucial

 

[Champ]

Now I'm only loyal to Intel and Corsair. I have no problems with amd/ati, they just need to prove themselves not to be the step child on the receiving end of beatings.

 

[Norton]

Case- Silverstone, Fractal Design, Corsair

PSU- Seasonic or Corsair

RAM- usually GSkill

Other items- depends on what's available, reviews, price, feedback, etc...

 

[HossHuge]

Whatever gives me the best bang for the buck. Brand loyalty never made much sense to me.

I fully agree with you on this point however you also have to think about how some brands have worked for you in the past. For example, I've been using my Enermax PSU forever and it has never failed me. Regardless of cost, my next PSU will be an Enermax.

 

[64K]

Corsair
Seasonic
Nvidia
ASUS

I usually buy when components are on great sales.

 

[XSI]

Actually no loyalty but i like
Samsung, LG for tv, msi was working great for almost 7 years i had mb and 2 gpus
nothing vs amd or intel it depends on usage. Performance - intel, basic - can be anything
Somehow nvidia psychologically don't know why just it was good for me.