well, this really ruined my day...

[Peter Korsten]

Op 21-6-2010 16:04, Tony Scharf schreef:

> Agreed 100%.  All of my windows issues have been traced back,
> eventually, to hardware that was mucking things up.

And there's a pretty direct link between the price of your components 
and the amount of trouble you have with them. This doesn't mean that all 
expensive is good (certain Intel mainboards are to be avoided, or so the 
story goes), but there are preciously few cheap components that don't 
give any problems.

So basically you have two options: either you buy Dell, Apple or some 
other well-established brand, or you get hardware from the likes of Tyan 
or Supermicro. Asus is right out for me, after one mainboard has cheap 
components, and another mainboard and a rather expensive graphics card 
simply broke.

Now, my next PC (which will only be a new mainboard, a CPU and RAM; all 
the other parts are reused, including the case, the case fans, the PSU, 
the drives and the graphics card - for now) will have a Supermicro 
mainboard, mostly because Tyan don't seem to be making consumer boards 
any longer. Actually, they have one: the C7X58, with predictable superb 
performance and drivers for all operating systems that you've heard of, 
and perhaps some that you haven't.

It also means that my upgrade cycle is about six years, but they, this 
Athlon64 2.2 GHz is still kicking along quite nicely.

- Peter