Okay - RANK you harware fav brands!

[Tony Williams]

Okay I felt this would be a great idea for people who arn't sure on brand, I'd like others to post there rankings too. I'll start with hard disks ...

Hard Drives (SATA)
Samsung (Silent, Reliable)
Hitachi (I like these people, ever since Deskster came out)
Maxtor (Maxline III = Good, overall Maxtor are good)
Seagate (Fairly okay, not as quiet as other)
Western Digital (Ugh)

RAM (DDR)
OCZ (O/clock really nice)
Crucial
Corsair
GeIL

Power Supply Units (Had to be quick)
Enermax
OCZ
Antec
Hiper
Tagan

Well I'd like other people to post thier favorites ... please don't use cheap never heard of brands and try and give reasons.

[DonVito]

Hard drives

Maxtor or Seagate - best money can buy.
Hitachi - Deskstars are often know as "Deathstars". Known to be unreliable.

PSU:
Enermax
Antec
Sparkle
Enlight
Xclio (made by same company as Antec, really great psu's)

RAM:
Corsair
Crucial
OCZ

Motherboards:
ASUS
ABIT
MSI

[Stryker]

HDD: Seagate (5 year warranty!!!)
RAM: Kingston (incredible performance/value ratio)
Motherboards: Asus, Asus, Intel and Asus (oh yeah, and Intel) for quality, reliability and compatability.
Chipset on Mobo: Nvidia for AMD and Intel for Intel (again, reliability, compatibility with respective CPUs)
Fans: Vantec Stealth
Video Card: ATI, Power Color, Connect3D (find ATI a bit more stable than Nvidia cards)
Cases: Antec, Chieftec (pretty much identical, but very high quality and NO SHARP EDGES!)

[Hi Ho]

First off, I have to disagree about your Hard drive ranking Tony. The general opinion around here, which has been formed from the experiences of many people, is that Samsung does not make good drives. Hitatchi has yet to prove themselves after the Deathstar debacle. Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital are the only ones I, along with most here, recommend though Western Digital seems to be having some problems as of late.

Anyway, here are my rankings:

Motherboards:
Asus - very reliable and good quality
Intel - excellent boards, Intel only
Abit - right up there with Asus
DFI - very good boards known especially for excellent overclocking

RAM - All good brands
Kinsgton
Mushkin
Crucial
OCZ
Geil

Hard Drives
Seagate - very quiet and reliable drives + 5 year warranty
Maxtor - very good drives though some are noisy
Western Digital - good reputation but appearent quality problems as of late

Video Cards
Leadtek - very good Nvidia cards with good quiet coolers
ATI - excellent quality ATI (duh) cards
Asus - very good ATI and Nvidia cards
MSI - very good Nvidia cards
eVGA - Nvidia's brand

Optical Drives
Plextor - best of the best but expensive
NEC - excellent, cheap, and quiet DVD burners
Lite-On - very good DVD burners
Asus - very good burners and DVD-ROMs

Fans
Panasonic Panaflo - quiet high quality fans that last forever
Enermax - relatively quiet high air flow fans

Power Supplies
PC Power&Cooling - among the best but expensive
Enermax - excellent units at a reasonable price
Antec - very good and reasonably priced
Xclio - now among the best value
FSP (Fortron Source) - very good PSU's in all price ranges
Enlight - formerly the value king, now a small selection but still good
OCZ - very good
Thermaltake - some Enlight clones, good units overall

Monitors
Samsung - good quality CRT and LCD monitors
Viewsonic - excellent CRT and very good LCD monitors
iiyama - rather expensive but good quality
NEC - very good CRT monitors
KDS - good budget brand

Routers
Linksys - reliable good quality
D-Link - good units for the money

Keyboard/Mouse
Microsoft - excellent keyboards, good mice
Logitech - excellent mice, good keyboards

Printers
Cannon - my top choice due to cheap ink, lightning fast high quailty prints, and good quality
HP - good printers but very slow overall in printing images, expensive ink

I think that's just about it.

[Panama Red]

Excellent work, Hi Ho. I concur wholeheartedly. Just a side note on the WD hard drives that have exibited failures of late. These all seem to be the 80Gb and 120Gb JB models (PATA, 8Mb cache). The WD SATA drives are still great, including the Raptor series.

[Hi Ho]

I have a WD 80GB JB series drive! I bought it to replace the Deathstar I had which did die in my other PC. I hope I didn't make another bad choice. It's been working for over a year now though. Should I be worried?

[DonVito]

You know, if we had something like this as a sticky thread it would really save alot of typing around here. I know theres already one for power supplies, but it would be nice to have one for all the common parts of a pc. I dont know how many different people ive told to not get some cheap-o motherboard, cd-drive, or hard drive.

Just a thought.

[Cricket]

Not sure if it makes a difference or not, but there seems to be two different WD SE JB hard drives...I recently got a replacement for a defective WD 80GB SE and it's identified as a WD 80GB SE Series II HDD with a black cover plate instead of the normal silver. I've been using it in a external closure for a few months and it seems to be working fine so far...no weird glitches or clicking sounds yet.

I still have 1 working WD 80GB SE in one of my own computers that seems to be running well...it's about 4 years old now...*knock on wood*...but I've had to RMA or replace about 6 WD 80GB and 120GB SE HDDs from other people's computers over the past two years. Been using Seagate HDDs in the builds I've been doing since last year.

Cricket

[Hi Ho]

Well my drive has never made any strange noises. Maybe I got a good one.

[DonVito]

Did the deskstars become bad when hitachi took them over? Because my current comp(5 yo gateway) has a 40gb IBM Deskstar ATA100 that it originally came with and it has been FLAWLESS. Ive never had one problem with this hard drive. Of course, i was only about 12yo at the time when we got this comp, so i dont know what kind of rep the IBM ones had. (kind of funny, when we bought this it was top of the line, cost about $3000, what i wouldn't do to have that much today to spend on a gamaing comp, lol.)

[Hi Ho]

Yes, it was around the time that Hitatchi took over. The old IBM drives were excellent.

[Panama Red]

I've had 1 of the 80Gb JB's take a dump on me and it was one that I picked up in a Retail package from Best Buy with a big rebate. Used it in a build for my son and it lasted just past the 12 month warranty. I'm still using the same drive as my standard for customer builds and so far (knock on wood) I've had no trouble with them.

[Tony Williams]

Okay guys, so you think my hard disk ranks suck :S

Personally I like the Samsung, not had problems and they are slient. The Deskster, I do have one it's fine I also have a Seagate as my main hard disk, it's great, Maxtor seem fine also, I like the look of thier MaxLine III, WD I also have, got with my eMachines fairly fine, does it's job.

I was planning on a newer hard disk 400 GB or bigger, I was considering a deskster 500 GB, would I be better off with a Seagate 400 GB insted?

Oh yeah, I think this post would make a great sticky!

As for some posts on the RAM, is Kingston anygood, doesn't seem much to me?

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by Tony Williams As for some posts on the RAM, is Kingston anygood, doesn't seem much to me?

I use Kingston in every budget - midrange build I do and never have trouble with it. As I said in my original list, it's great quality and performance for a great value. It's compatible with almost any system you can throw it at too.

[glc]

Here's the IBM/Hitachi/Deathstar story.

IBM used to make the best hard drives on the planet. They were the first with a 7200 rpm IDE drive. They were the leader in new hard drive technology. Well, they brought out the 75GXP series (with the top model a 75gb drive, absolutely unheard of at that time) with GLASS substrate platters. Well, excellent concept, but not debugged enough. The platters were not shock resistant enough, and they had major issues with the magnetic material flaking off the glass. By the time they got these issues solved (and the issues did spill over into other models, such as the 60GXP and 120GXP), it was too late, the Deathstar was here to stay. The sale of the hard drive division to Hitachi came later, and Hitachi still hasn't overcome the stigma. Supposedly today's technology Hitachi drives are as good as any, but those of us who got burned by the Deathstar are not returning in droves.

You cannot simplify hard drive reliability. All of the major companies have had their ups and downs. There have been points in time where Seagate (fill in the blank) built trash and where Maxtor (fill in the blank) has built the best drives around. For all I know, the new Samsungs may be the best drives around, but their past performance is steering me away from using them. We used to be a 100% WD shop, but their recent JB issues plus the warranty policies have steered us to Seagate (5 year warranty across the board) now. However, I still recommend Raptors and the SATA RE (RAID Edition) WD's.

[Tin]

Motherboards:
DFI - The king of overclocking
Abit - The prince of overclocking

Memory:
G. Skill - the best of the best, also no flashy heat spreaders
Mushkin - used to be the best until dethroned by G. Skill
Kingston - Good all around for performance/value
OCZ - up there with G. Skill as far as overclocking memory is concerned

Video Cards:
ATI Sapphire Powercolor eVGA MSI Albatron XFX

Power Supplies:
PC Power & Cooling - the best PSU you can buy, extremely overpriced
OCZ (Powerstream) - great PSU, however, the Modstream doesnt use the same guts as the Powerstream...hence the reason i say Powerstream only.
Enermax - excellent dollar to performance ratio
ePower/Tagan - one of the better value brands of power supplies, extremely stable
XClio - a relative newcomer to the PSU world, a very stable and reliable unit...also very cost effective.

[spyder003]

Mobo:
Asus
Intel

Chipset:
nForce
Intel

RAM:
Corsair
Crucial
Kingston
Geil

HDD:
WD (Raptors only )
Seagate
Maxtor

Optical:
Plextor
Lite-On
NEC

Video:
ATi
eVGA

PSU:
Anything off "our" list though I prefer Antec


No technical reasons really, just quality parts that I'd prefer to use.

[David M]

Tin,
You dont like ASUS boards? Your big on overclocking...is this why?

Aren't eVGA video cards ASUS cards?. Gawd I hope so because I bought two ASUS graphics cards. Any opinions on ASUS graphics cards?

I have had nothing but good luck with my WD Raptor drives...till I dropped one on the floor...but whose fault is that?

My Crucial Ballistix RAM has been flawless and overclockable.

Plextor seems to be the best for optical drives.

Lian-Li cases...absolutely the best and best looking. (wolf whistle)

PC Power & Cooling PSU's...absolutely the best specs and reliability.

For water cooling components...Koolance and Dangerden.

[Tin]

Originally Posted by David M Tin, You dont like ASUS boards? Your big on overclocking...is this why?

yes, although i do build with Asus for stock running machines.

Aren't eVGA video cards ASUS cards?. Gawd I hope so because I bought two ASUS graphics cards. Any opinions on ASUS graphics cards?

eVGA is nVidias own brand as far as I know. Asus is Asus...even though they use the right GPU, their boards stray away from the reference PCB layout.

My Crucial Ballistix RAM has been flawless and overclockable.

Ballistix RAM is nice...although Buffalo, Kingston Value RAM, Corsair Value Select, and standard Crucial memory come packed with the same chips as Ballistix. Ballistix use Micron -5b D memory chips.

[Tony Williams]

Wow tonne of replies, keep 'em coming!

My favorite case!

Thermaltake Tsumnidream Black!

It has 2 x 120mm fans and it's a lot like the Wavemaster but cheaper and with out the removable motherboard tray.

It's a nice looking case, I'm saving for it right now!

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Stryker I use Kingston in every budget - midrange build I do and never have trouble with it. As I said in my original list, it's great quality and performance for a great value. It's compatible with almost any system you can throw it at too.

I use Kingston ValueRAM in the builds I do too, but I've had a handful of them go bad in a few builds over the years and had to go through the RMA process. I switched to Geil for awhile, but went back to Kingston ValueRAM...not even sure why because I never had any problems with the Geil RAM.

I've also used A-DATA, Apacer, Buffalo, Centon, Dane-Elec, PNY, Simple Tech and Viking with good results (didn't have to RMA any of these...yet)...but I keep going back to Kingston ValueRAM, the brand that I've had problems with. I really don't know why...maybe because I know the RMA process so well .

I've never built with Crucial, Corsair or Mushkin RAM.

Cricket

[fudtone]

MB Intel
HDD WD
GPU eVga
CPU Intel
RAM Kingston
PSU PC P&C
Keyboard IBM
Mouse MX 1000

[Marke522]

Motherboards:
Asus, Abit

Harddrives:
Used to use nothing but WD, no problems with any but the problems other have are sterring me to use Maxtor. Used a few of those so far and really love them. I use Seagate as 3rd choice. Maybe I should take a look at the Samsung drives.

Opticals:
Sony, Lite-On, Asus, NEC.
Never tired Pelxtor, I know their good, but just way to much money for me right now. I think the Sony drives are the best for the price.

Video Cards:
ATi, eVGA, PNY.

Speakers:
Logitech, Altec, Klipsch

Memory:
Kingston, Corsair, Geil

Power Supplies:
Enermax, Thermaltake.

I've use other parts before in other computers, for cost reasons to get a cheaper price for someone, but I don't recommend those unless you just want to read email and surf the net. My mom has a Soyo board, but it was free. Can't really beat that price.

[Tony Williams]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Kingston.html

Next time I build a value PC, insted of Corsairs Value, I'll try HyperX!

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by Cricket I use Kingston ValueRAM in the builds I do too, but I've had a handful of them go bad in a few builds over the years and had to go through the RMA process.

I would be willing to bet that you do a whole lot more builds than me Cricket. That would increase the chances a bit.

For more "high-end" builds, I've found OCZ's higher-end versions to be quite good performers.

Originally Posted by Tony Williams Next time I build a value PC, insted of Corsairs Value, I'll try HyperX!

Kingston's HyperX I believe is intended more for performance systems (although I've never used it). It has lower latency than the standard Kingston Value Ram. I'm not saying don't use it, just a little tid-bit of info.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Stryker I would be willing to bet that you do a whole lot more builds than me Cricket. That would increase the chances a bit.

I've been building since 1997 but don't really do many per year...maybe 10 a year (I only build for myself, friends and family...it's just a hobby that I don't want to spend any more time on). I'm only closing in on 80 builds now...HAL9000 said he's built over 5000 computers over the years and I can't even begin to guess how many glc has done.

Cricket

[Stryker]

Still miles ahead of me. Only about 15 under my belt. Same as you though, only for friends and family. I've only ever charged for 2 or 3, so like you, it's just a hobby.

[Tony Williams]

Building a computer is what brings out the manhood!

[Hi Ho]

I think the Sony drives are the best for the price.

The Sony burners are Lite-On's with the bit settings disabled and a higher price. I'd take a Lite-On over a Sony and an NEC over a Lite-On.

[bizzle44]

This is a great thread for a newb like me ( ) looking for good brands. How about more specification on brands that are better for performance/overclocking or better for value/stock builds? Your response is invaluable to me! TY!