So higher cost, plus shorter games just means that people won't use the pinball tables anymore. Ummmm... pinball was a quarter back in the 1970s, and has only gone up to 50cents or 50p in your neck of the woods? I wouldn't complain. It's been a while since I went to an arcade but 50cent games were not unusual 10 years ago... and in fact I suspect they are the norm now.
Pinball is one of those games if you got the skill, you'll get a lot of play for your coin and a ton of replays. I don't have such skill, i'd be lucky to get one replay or two. But I'm just saying there are pinball wizards. You may have met one or two at the roller rink, the mini-mart, perhaps a legit arcade.
OTOH used good quality power supplies ARE your friend. People replace working 200-300W power supplies with stronger ones and there's a surplus of old good quality standard strength power supplies. They WILL die faster than normal but they are cheap enough and easy to replace, and I always keep a spare. Hey, I can't disagree with a good used unit from power mongers. Granted I bought a new 350watt unit, but this was due to well, troubleshooting an intermittent problem. But if you are going through power supplies, you have a problem. In the past one could feel the output of an overloaded power supply... if the temp was warm upgrade. Not so sure about current generation systems actually sucking 200~300 watts and beyond. A good power supply is going to have a run for... well... over 5 years. I'm happy to spend $45 or even $75.
I thought about being a truly cheap bastard, and taking two known good 200 watt units, one for drives and one for the system. I'm lazy.
Only if you intend to tinker a lot. If the setup is to stay for years unchanged, these are reasonable. Tinkering has nothing to do with it.... well... it has something to do with it... but there are other cases too like over voltage. You want the motherboard to have the ability to supersede the power supply.
I disagree. Memory is easy to test thoroughly and breaks by itself only in rarest of cases. Just make sure you can return it if the test fails. I swore off cheap memory a long time ago. When 256meg dimms fell to $20 I was all over them. About 1 in 4 I bought failed after a year. It didn't outrightly fail.
Now if it has a warranty great, but the sub budget market doesn't carry with it a warranty to write home about.
4) Sub budget and old hard drives are your enemy. You're hard pressed to find one to live more than a year, and they tend to develop problems over time. You can try to troubleshoot software for months while the hdd is guilty. Well... I wouldn't recommend a sub budget HD. But like plentiful power supplies there are plenty of old models or smaller sizes to choose from with good solid warranties.
Let's take an example from my history. Pentium III 500 when it was a premium machine. Motherboard tripped the power supply. Motherboard OK (Asus P3V4x IIRC), Ram OK, CPU cooked.
Alternative situation with a PC chips POS. Board fried, chip fried.
Another case in point. Biostar VIP board... detected an over voltage in a stock full tower supply, something you don't expect to be lame.
I'm not going to say your method won't work. It will work perfectly fine. For me, I would rather take a performance hit rather than buy cheap parts. As far as keeping in budget... I sell my old parts, to people like you, people who expect to keep a sub budget machine in service for more than 3 years and have parts fail.
I'll even admit, cascade failure is rare... just less so on those no name (PC CHIPS) motherboards.
Assemble the computer from the '$30 class' computer parts. It WILL cause trouble in places. Return/sell/dump parts that cause problems, replace them with the '$150 class' parts.
It's a good middle ground between buying extremely expensive stuff from the start (I can't afford it) and troubleshooting cheap unreliable parts endlessly (I just don't have the patience). If it proves reliable, keep it. If it fails, replace it with a better one. While I admire your logic, there are a few things that experience has taught me. Most of all troubleshooting a failed part is a pain enough, troubleshooting an intermittent problem is a royal pain. As in when you are in the middle of doing work.
1) Sub budget powersupplies are NOT your friend. Lack of any good reliable circuit protection could easily fry a motherboard. It's generally safe to spend a few extra bucks here as power supplies don't change often. After swapping out a few $15 units, you might as well bought a $45 unit. 2) Sub budget motherboards are NOT your friend. Without tripping the power good line, you do risk your chip. 3) Sub budget memory isn't your friend, though it won't likely fry anything, intermittent problems will lead to troubleshooting for hours, days, weeks.
I'm a cheap bastard my self. To save money I just go for last years model. Socket 939 is a good choice for motherboard, and CPU on the cheap and has the benefit of being tested into the ground. Those single core 4000+ chips are nothing to sneeze at.
You can skimp in other areas, but for me if the machine isn't reliable, it's not worth using.
However, this is not to say I've not known the sub budget method to not work. You always gotta replace something and might turn out well in the end. I prefer to buy into quality parts that will have a good resale value... for that other guy who bought $30 parts.
Update: Tech ARP has just updated the editorial with the details of the fake motherboard manufacturer and the company has issued an official statement about the issue as well. I would have less of an issue with J&W Technology if these boards had NO logos what so ever. At least that way they couldn't be confused with a legit product and I would have no way of knowing that they were counterfeits. The PC Chips business model is based on selling OEM gear to 3rd parties for sale under their own label, and it wouldn't strike me as unusual for DFI to seem to be doing the same thing.
If they have the technology to build a motherboard and a processor, why don't they just create their own brand instead of faking other ones? 1) R&D isn't trivial 2) Support isn't trivial 3) BIOSes are not free
It's far cheaper to take someone else's design, pirate a bios, and not tell a soul you made the sucker. No returns, no accountability, no bullshit. You get your dollars per unit and are totally happy.
It's like in the mid 90s with the relabeled PC chips shitty boards. These were crap, and the only people really held accountable were the resellers.
I remember PC Chips doing something similar. They manufactured motherboards with fake L2 cache, from the old 486 into early Pentium 1 era. Do you think I jest? They glued fake plastic chips onto motherboards and then simply programmed the BIOS to report the cache enabled, even though there was none to begin with. I remember this time period very well. Dealers had the same MO
1) You go in, get chip and board under $150, cables fan everything 2) Next time unless you had the flyer, the price jumps 3) They call you by your first name but when you claim there was this deal last time (free cables and cpu fan) they claim to have never met you before. 4) When you upgrade to a better board, you only get like $30 credit on the one they sold you, and you have to buy the fan and cables making it cheaper to keep the damn shitty board.
I didn't get the fake cache issue, I bought into an AMD socket 3 5x86 133 which was a low cost high performance chip in it's heyday... and IMHO out performed the socket 4 60/66 without a doubt. Odd ball board, with both a PCI and VESA. A great platform until socket 7 came into the fold. I however got into the so called "VX PRO" boards, labeled whatever you like, just don't remove the sticker else you'll find a critic house number. It was when the Cyrix 6x86 150/166s were out and kinda spiffy.
Mine was either a Matsonic or an Amptron, I'm not sure which as it had documentation for both. I know many that actually were in service for years, and there are even some docs to hack the board to accept AMD k6 series chips. Mine caught fire, not that it didn't stop working, but I like to avoid boards that blow parts.
But nothing was as bad as the parent stated, boards with fake cache chips on it. I didn't buy one as I benched my 386 with an IIT mathco and found it to be faster. I stuck with my 386, silly me.
You will replace your $150 motherboard in 2-3 years. That's about as long as your $30 one would serve you. You presume the $30 board will last for 2-3 years, and be reliable. A good rule of thumb, if it works for a year odds are it'll continue to work for years. If it's going to fail, it'll fail in a short period of time, or have intermittent problems that are always the worst to troubleshoot. The absolute worst is when you upgrade to the latest and greatest chip and suddenly what you had that worked well for a year doesn't work so well anymore.
My rule of thumb, buy something that'll last, not because i'm going to keep it for eons, but because when I upgrade I'm going to want to sell it at 1/2 or 1/4 the cost I paid for it.
While I have had some bad experiences with sub par boards (rebranded PC Chips), I have seen some that remained in service for years. So I'm willing to believe it is possible to get a stellar deal. But really it is rather a gamble.
If it's the same product make by the same people with the same parts in the same factory then all this is not true....in this case
What you are buying when you buy the genuine article is a valid warranty, and the ability to get some recompense if it is faulty and nothing more I listed the issues I've experienced with the super budget bargain bin. I stand by those statements. Even if we are talking about a 3rd party who actually manufactured the product... what assurance do you have that the bargain bin product went through the same level of quality control that the other boards did. And the sited examples use model numbers which are not listed on the website... so we still have that unknown quantity. And the chips may have not gone through the same level of finishing work that the main stream board has.
The warranty is more than just "recompense if it is faulty". It's assurance that in the unlikely event of failure, you'll get the same fucking thing you bought in the first place at no cost.
1) Card A might work fine in Board A, but board B has issues 2) Board B might have other accessories that require other drivers 3) Board B might be another chipset entirely. 4) Board B will likely trigger windows activation. 5) Board B will likely have different placement of ports, worst case you gotta buy power extension cables.
Getting the same fucking thing without a doubt will result in less downtime. This is not to say it might not be worth the change, but as a good rule of thumb if you want exactly a specific make and model, i'll cost you more.
This is neither here nor there, but I just bought an MSI K8N Diamond (MS-7100) from NewEgg.com for $30 to replace a BFG nForce4 Ultra 939 motherboard (re-branded Chain-Tech, and incidentally crap if you want to know) that died on me recently. Been working great. Hey, a K8n for $30, cool beans.
The whole Newegg open box can be a good deal, unless it isn't. I got a bum product through them. ATI 9600 based video card with an intermittent issue... same sort of issue an old TNT2 card had.
But the 939 is really a good platform to buy into on the cheap. You can buy into a high end board with all the bells and whistles and still get the warranty. But...
In your case, you bought into a lame board for I presume the $90 range, and shelled out an extra $30.
Don't get me wrong, I played the buy it as cheap as you can game.
1) Cheap arse memory. bizzaro intermittent problems with one simm/dimm that took forever to trouble shoot, and no warranty to replace it. Lifetime warranty is worth it, because at some point it'll hit the legacy zone and cost more than is reasonable to replace. 2) Cheap arse boards. Bizarro intermittent problems. 3) Cheap arse power supplies. Bizarro intermittent problems
There reached a point where I didn't want to spend my time troubleshooting.
I wouldn't say you have to spend $60 to get a good motherboard, at least not with the kind of heavy discounting I lucked out on. I'm speaking generally, but even with your deal... you spent I presume a reasonable dollar for a 939 board, and then replaced it with a $30 open box I presume no warranty board. What happens down the road in a year and that fails. Are you going to be able to pickup another $30 board or will it be in the legacy zone and actually cost a fair bit more to keep your older platform in service?
I know people who are happy with their socket A class machines which generally are still in service. But in the unlikely event of failure those boards are few and far between. Even at compgeeks they only have one which i'd trust (biostar m7vif) referb almost gone. Locally they have returned to if they have it top dollar status. Same deal with socket 754 which to be fair was always the cheap end of the the game. Good enough, but even with Asus they had high failure rate.
$60 represents a consistent price for closeout or overstock boards that still have a warranty, and are worth their salt. Not the latest and greatest, but something so close to current generation but not so old that it's already in the legacy zone. I'm not saying you can't find a stellar deal under that, but you lose some important perks.
You want to be that guy who upgrades and sells his old stuff on craigslist, to that other guy who was a dumb ass and bought a lame product that absolutely must have what you got. You don't want to be that guy who is stuck with an older platform that'll cost too much to fix and have to depend on the kindness of those on craigslist.
You sure about that? DFI may contract for these boards, but the manufacture, test, and packaging is all done by the factory. What exactly is DFI providing?
Perhaps they could assert that buying a "genuine" DFI motherboard provides extra peace of mind and a valid warranty, but if all the parts come from the same materials and the same manufacturing techniques (in fact the same exact production line), then the difference is the label and warranty, right?
Or is the knowledge to build chips somehow purely DFI's to own? Reputation. That's really the big deal about buying a name brand board. Reputation that the company in question has some quality control standards, builds their product within specifications, will provide bios updates, and replace the product in the unlikely event that it is defective.
A counterfeit board might have the following issues:
1) Counterfeit bios, or a poorly implemented one. 2) Inferior parts... voltage regulars that overheat, under rated caps, shitty resisters, fuzzy silk screening, poor materials. 3) Mislabled parts... claims to use one chipset but really under the heatsync is another. 4) Dummy parts... looks like a slot, but ain't hooked up to anything. 5) Unknown factor. I can read reviews on Brand X's 123 board vs Brand Y's 123 board. Each model will have it's own features, and performance benefits. Counterfeit 123s may not even share the same attributes (jacks, ports, slots, layout) as a genuine board.
But what does DFI provide? They provide a product worthy of putting their label on it. They accept responsibility for it. They might not even have designed or manufactured it, but it bears their brand and at the end of they day they are accountable for a product they sold. A good reputation is what people pay money for... assurance that they won't get stuck with a product that they'll have to return or lose their money on.
It doesn't matter if we are talking lightbulbs, toasters, motherboards, macrame coat hangers, if you put your brand on a product, you take the blame if that product is crap.
All those motherboards have all the right looking shininess, capacitors, traces etc etc. How does a person without a PhD in I dunno--hardware something--tell these apart from legit boards (apart from the legit boards not being sold in the country of sale.) This is a legit enough question, one where there is no easy answer. I remember back in 2000 when some parts dealers were popping up all had fliers for their special of the month. Some were legit, but some used boards with counterfeit bios. The only way one can tell by looking at it was looking up the BIOS ID what was flashed for a moment upon bootup.
It's not like the deals were too good to be true. For about $100 from each dealer you could buy a reasonably cheap MB and Chip combo in OEM packaging and a sub par manual.
There was no real solution to ID fake boards, only the general advice of avoiding seedy dealers, which is none too helpful as no matter where you go, you always have to buy something from someone for the first time. And in the age of ordering online, shop loyalty has gone out the window.
So, if I can save 80% of my money buying a "counterfeit" motherboard, is my little indiscretion going to break the global economy? Well... You would have to show me a case where you actually save 80%, as in a $150 motherboard for $30. I'm not talking surplus or last years model here.... things released in the $150 bracket for $30.
Second... how reliable do you think a 80% cheaper board is? I know during the 486 era I was hip to buying some cheap arse boards. We're talking rebranded PC chips crap. Even the socket 754 line which was designed to be the cheap line... even true blue asus boards had a high return rate. I'm sure other/. users could tell us of their horror stories. A board failure is bad enough, not to speak of damage to other parts such as cpu and memory odds are you spent more than $30.00 on.
And third... support from a counterfeit board. Bios updates are ultra handy. Even from a non-counterfeit board i've seen a lack of updates in the pentium III class where win2k or xp refused to work (I forget the issue, but something MS and intel hashed out). Imagine a pirated bios with no chance of an update.
And lastly... let's say you "could" get a $30 motherboard. Odds are you're going to have to replace that sucker relatively soon with another $30 board because of failure, lack of updates, or whatever. You're out $60. You might as well have bought a $60 board, which to me represents an older model, overstock, or closeout deal.
So to sum up
1) 80% savings is too good to be true for new gear. 2) You risk failure or damage to your equipment 3) Lack of support and updates make it a headache 4) Under pretty ideal conditions, you'll likely be better off with a realistic discount for a realistic reason.
Yeah, you've obviously never been in the US military. When you leave the firing range or come out of a combat zone, they just about make you turn out your pockets to make sure you don't have any stray ammo that you might shoot someone with. /me looks at his tins of.30 caliper ammo and scratches his head.
Seriously I would like to know when the US changed their attitude on ammo. I'm not military but I know that I have ammo that was fetched from the shotting range some decades back, and have spent time with military types who seem to have endless supplies of ammo that they pretty much nicked from uncle sam.
While I never presumed it was official policy to give solders free ammo... there seemed to be much of it floating about, something I didn't object to as it's their job to shoot things.
Its been long known that some soldiers, etc. have been keeping guns and ammo for themselves including rifles and machine guns. Some? I shouldn't say all, and I'm not military my self, but from my understanding soldiers who want to bring ammo home is the sort of thing that might be encouraged as it gives them a chance to enjoy target practice during their off hours. I would think that this is the sort of thing that should be encouraged to a degree.
High explosives? Grenades? That's there I would draw the line.
As someone else pointed out, a vigilante is someone who ENFORCES their own JUSTICE. Just holding someone (or clearly stolen property) for the police to handle isn't vigilantism. As I pointed out... the actions taken were under the three fingered flag of "great justice". The injustice was theft of property. The justice served was action taken, blocking the car, so the owner could retrieve their property. Further more, the owner plans on keeping this person's face on the internet and labeling them forever as a car thief.
I'm not complaining. I in fact agree with the actions of a bunch of proactive citizens in this case. But I still see it as a form of vigilantism... just not outright vigilantism.
I don't agree with this - vigilantism is concerned with extra-judicial punishment, not apprehension or even arrest. You have a right to catch a criminal and hand him over to police, although yes, you have to stay within the law yourself. I would still argue it's a form of vigilantism as many people who participated in this campaign did so under the three fingered flag of great justice. The justice served was done so by blocking the car so it could be retrieved by the owner as it was clearly felt that the authorities response was inadequate.
Had it not been a 17-year old used car. The story says the kid was charged with larceny over $5,000. In light of that, I think it's the dealer who should have been charged with a larceny. I'm totally ignorant on the value of a 1991 Nissan Skyline GT-R. I don't think it's a North American model However a 1991 300zx turbo coupe would easily fetch USD$5,000 on a good day, not that I know how the 300zx compares to the Skyline at all, only that it's a Nissan Sports car.
All the Beyond.ca guys did was identify the thief. The actual police have done all of the enforcement, if you'd like, here's a video to confirm. And box in the car, twice apparently. Since it's not a person we can't call it an arrest, but I would argue that at this point they took a very active role, rather than just passive reporting and photographing.
A group took it upon them selves, to investigate and take measures to assist in the identification and apprehension of the thief and recovery of stolen property. The action they took to me is a form of vigilantism. I wouldn't say they violated due process, though if they had boxed in the wrong car I'm sure they would have to answer for their actions in one way or another.
This reminds me of the c:\program files\ as a default install folder. I think it started with Windows 95. I read somewhere, years after the launch, that it was specifically chosen to force programmers to handle long file names properly. Of the things that Microsoft did with win95.... \program files isn't one of them. Sure it was annoying to have to learn progra~1 for software that couldn't handle filenames at first, but establishing a standard place to shove programs made freaking sense. The pre95 era was a nightmare as users saved documents pretty much where the default folder was, which to be fair could be just about anywhere.
It's one of those cases where it didn't actually matter what they were called, and where they were located... programs there.... documents there.
No they didn't design UAC to annoy users. This was a crass statement made by a Microsoft employee. No company would design something to annoy users. This was a poor use of self-deprecating rhetoric that will be exploited to the extreme. It's a dumb statement for a Microsoftie to make, and really dumb for the media to exploit. 1) Create a new feature that annoys users 2) Sell new software with less annoyance 3) Profit!
There are better ways to implement UAC, it seems pretty clear that their sloppy implementation was designed to get users to complain to their vendors to update their shit to the new paradigm. Problem is, this new paradigm was not fully adopted within the walls of microsoft.
It is an idiotic approach. Vista is the one being annoying....how could someone predict that end users would blame the applications and not the os that's to blame? Microsoft employees seem to have this built in chant "it's a vendor issue". It helps to deflect criticism, and they do make the rules. But they are never clear on the rules, but they do have a line where the problem is vendor or MS specific. They moved that line, they changed the rules. And to add insult to injury, the explanation "it's a vendor issue" applies when the vendor is Microsoft!
I watched Tom Cruise say on national television that you can be a Christian, a Bhuddist, a Muslim or a Jew and be a Scientologist. From my perspective, that is not the definition of a religion. Well... you can be a Buddhist and something else as well AFAIK. The funny thing about it being non-theistic. Religion is something hard to define... on the one hand you have truths you hold tightly which is rather vague. Traditionally religions put perspective how you relate to the big picture.
Most christian churches do not charge their members thousands of dollars on compulsive seminaries. Tithing is voluntary, last time I looked. And disclosure if mandatory as to what this money goes to. Even if you are not a believer there are benefits to many churches which people are happy to donate to. Most important, you can meet members of the opposite sex and is typically less costly than hitting a singles bar.
Religions are just successful cults, and money/power drives all cults. This is true. It takes hundreds of years to cultivate a religion. About 100 to cultivate a branch of another.
Uh "they are a scam... which promotes itself as a religion." What's your definition of a religion? A religion is a large popular cult. A cult is a small unpopular religion.
A scam is wrapping pseudo-science under the cloak of religion when convenient, and calling it secular when it isn't.
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Pinball is one of those games if you got the skill, you'll get a lot of play for your coin and a ton of replays. I don't have such skill, i'd be lucky to get one replay or two. But I'm just saying there are pinball wizards. You may have met one or two at the roller rink, the mini-mart, perhaps a legit arcade.
They WILL die faster than normal but they are cheap enough and easy to replace, and I always keep a spare. Hey, I can't disagree with a good used unit from power mongers. Granted I bought a new 350watt unit, but this was due to well, troubleshooting an intermittent problem. But if you are going through power supplies, you have a problem. In the past one could feel the output of an overloaded power supply... if the temp was warm upgrade. Not so sure about current generation systems actually sucking 200~300 watts and beyond. A good power supply is going to have a run for... well... over 5 years. I'm happy to spend $45 or even $75.
I thought about being a truly cheap bastard, and taking two known good 200 watt units, one for drives and one for the system. I'm lazy. Only if you intend to tinker a lot. If the setup is to stay for years unchanged, these are reasonable. Tinkering has nothing to do with it.... well... it has something to do with it... but there are other cases too like over voltage. You want the motherboard to have the ability to supersede the power supply. I disagree. Memory is easy to test thoroughly and breaks by itself only in rarest of cases. Just make sure you can return it if the test fails. I swore off cheap memory a long time ago. When 256meg dimms fell to $20 I was all over them. About 1 in 4 I bought failed after a year. It didn't outrightly fail.
Now if it has a warranty great, but the sub budget market doesn't carry with it a warranty to write home about. 4) Sub budget and old hard drives are your enemy. You're hard pressed to find one to live more than a year, and they tend to develop problems over time. You can try to troubleshoot software for months while the hdd is guilty. Well... I wouldn't recommend a sub budget HD. But like plentiful power supplies there are plenty of old models or smaller sizes to choose from with good solid warranties.
Let's take an example from my history. Pentium III 500 when it was a premium machine. Motherboard tripped the power supply. Motherboard OK (Asus P3V4x IIRC), Ram OK, CPU cooked.
Alternative situation with a PC chips POS. Board fried, chip fried.
Another case in point. Biostar VIP board... detected an over voltage in a stock full tower supply, something you don't expect to be lame.
I'm not going to say your method won't work. It will work perfectly fine. For me, I would rather take a performance hit rather than buy cheap parts. As far as keeping in budget... I sell my old parts, to people like you, people who expect to keep a sub budget machine in service for more than 3 years and have parts fail.
I'll even admit, cascade failure is rare... just less so on those no name (PC CHIPS) motherboards.
It's a good middle ground between buying extremely expensive stuff from the start (I can't afford it) and troubleshooting cheap unreliable parts endlessly (I just don't have the patience). If it proves reliable, keep it. If it fails, replace it with a better one. While I admire your logic, there are a few things that experience has taught me. Most of all troubleshooting a failed part is a pain enough, troubleshooting an intermittent problem is a royal pain. As in when you are in the middle of doing work.
1) Sub budget powersupplies are NOT your friend. Lack of any good reliable circuit protection could easily fry a motherboard. It's generally safe to spend a few extra bucks here as power supplies don't change often. After swapping out a few $15 units, you might as well bought a $45 unit.
2) Sub budget motherboards are NOT your friend. Without tripping the power good line, you do risk your chip.
3) Sub budget memory isn't your friend, though it won't likely fry anything, intermittent problems will lead to troubleshooting for hours, days, weeks.
I'm a cheap bastard my self. To save money I just go for last years model. Socket 939 is a good choice for motherboard, and CPU on the cheap and has the benefit of being tested into the ground. Those single core 4000+ chips are nothing to sneeze at.
You can skimp in other areas, but for me if the machine isn't reliable, it's not worth using.
However, this is not to say I've not known the sub budget method to not work. You always gotta replace something and might turn out well in the end. I prefer to buy into quality parts that will have a good resale value... for that other guy who bought $30 parts.
2) Support isn't trivial
3) BIOSes are not free
It's far cheaper to take someone else's design, pirate a bios, and not tell a soul you made the sucker. No returns, no accountability, no bullshit. You get your dollars per unit and are totally happy.
It's like in the mid 90s with the relabeled PC chips shitty boards. These were crap, and the only people really held accountable were the resellers.
1) You go in, get chip and board under $150, cables fan everything
2) Next time unless you had the flyer, the price jumps
3) They call you by your first name but when you claim there was this deal last time (free cables and cpu fan) they claim to have never met you before.
4) When you upgrade to a better board, you only get like $30 credit on the one they sold you, and you have to buy the fan and cables making it cheaper to keep the damn shitty board.
I didn't get the fake cache issue, I bought into an AMD socket 3 5x86 133 which was a low cost high performance chip in it's heyday... and IMHO out performed the socket 4 60/66 without a doubt. Odd ball board, with both a PCI and VESA. A great platform until socket 7 came into the fold. I however got into the so called "VX PRO" boards, labeled whatever you like, just don't remove the sticker else you'll find a critic house number. It was when the Cyrix 6x86 150/166s were out and kinda spiffy.
Mine was either a Matsonic or an Amptron, I'm not sure which as it had documentation for both. I know many that actually were in service for years, and there are even some docs to hack the board to accept AMD k6 series chips. Mine caught fire, not that it didn't stop working, but I like to avoid boards that blow parts.
But nothing was as bad as the parent stated, boards with fake cache chips on it. I didn't buy one as I benched my 386 with an IIT mathco and found it to be faster. I stuck with my 386, silly me.
My rule of thumb, buy something that'll last, not because i'm going to keep it for eons, but because when I upgrade I'm going to want to sell it at 1/2 or 1/4 the cost I paid for it.
While I have had some bad experiences with sub par boards (rebranded PC Chips), I have seen some that remained in service for years. So I'm willing to believe it is possible to get a stellar deal. But really it is rather a gamble.
What you are buying when you buy the genuine article is a valid warranty, and the ability to get some recompense if it is faulty and nothing more I listed the issues I've experienced with the super budget bargain bin. I stand by those statements. Even if we are talking about a 3rd party who actually manufactured the product... what assurance do you have that the bargain bin product went through the same level of quality control that the other boards did. And the sited examples use model numbers which are not listed on the website... so we still have that unknown quantity. And the chips may have not gone through the same level of finishing work that the main stream board has.
The warranty is more than just "recompense if it is faulty". It's assurance that in the unlikely event of failure, you'll get the same fucking thing you bought in the first place at no cost.
1) Card A might work fine in Board A, but board B has issues
2) Board B might have other accessories that require other drivers
3) Board B might be another chipset entirely.
4) Board B will likely trigger windows activation.
5) Board B will likely have different placement of ports, worst case you gotta buy power extension cables.
Getting the same fucking thing without a doubt will result in less downtime. This is not to say it might not be worth the change, but as a good rule of thumb if you want exactly a specific make and model, i'll cost you more.
The whole Newegg open box can be a good deal, unless it isn't. I got a bum product through them. ATI 9600 based video card with an intermittent issue... same sort of issue an old TNT2 card had.
But the 939 is really a good platform to buy into on the cheap. You can buy into a high end board with all the bells and whistles and still get the warranty. But...
In your case, you bought into a lame board for I presume the $90 range, and shelled out an extra $30.
Don't get me wrong, I played the buy it as cheap as you can game.
1) Cheap arse memory. bizzaro intermittent problems with one simm/dimm that took forever to trouble shoot, and no warranty to replace it. Lifetime warranty is worth it, because at some point it'll hit the legacy zone and cost more than is reasonable to replace.
2) Cheap arse boards. Bizarro intermittent problems.
3) Cheap arse power supplies. Bizarro intermittent problems
There reached a point where I didn't want to spend my time troubleshooting. I wouldn't say you have to spend $60 to get a good motherboard, at least not with the kind of heavy discounting I lucked out on. I'm speaking generally, but even with your deal... you spent I presume a reasonable dollar for a 939 board, and then replaced it with a $30 open box I presume no warranty board. What happens down the road in a year and that fails. Are you going to be able to pickup another $30 board or will it be in the legacy zone and actually cost a fair bit more to keep your older platform in service?
I know people who are happy with their socket A class machines which generally are still in service. But in the unlikely event of failure those boards are few and far between. Even at compgeeks they only have one which i'd trust (biostar m7vif) referb almost gone. Locally they have returned to if they have it top dollar status. Same deal with socket 754 which to be fair was always the cheap end of the the game. Good enough, but even with Asus they had high failure rate.
$60 represents a consistent price for closeout or overstock boards that still have a warranty, and are worth their salt. Not the latest and greatest, but something so close to current generation but not so old that it's already in the legacy zone. I'm not saying you can't find a stellar deal under that, but you lose some important perks.
You want to be that guy who upgrades and sells his old stuff on craigslist, to that other guy who was a dumb ass and bought a lame product that absolutely must have what you got. You don't want to be that guy who is stuck with an older platform that'll cost too much to fix and have to depend on the kindness of those on craigslist.
Perhaps they could assert that buying a "genuine" DFI motherboard provides extra peace of mind and a valid warranty, but if all the parts come from the same materials and the same manufacturing techniques (in fact the same exact production line), then the difference is the label and warranty, right?
Or is the knowledge to build chips somehow purely DFI's to own? Reputation. That's really the big deal about buying a name brand board. Reputation that the company in question has some quality control standards, builds their product within specifications, will provide bios updates, and replace the product in the unlikely event that it is defective.
A counterfeit board might have the following issues:
1) Counterfeit bios, or a poorly implemented one.
2) Inferior parts... voltage regulars that overheat, under rated caps, shitty resisters, fuzzy silk screening, poor materials.
3) Mislabled parts... claims to use one chipset but really under the heatsync is another.
4) Dummy parts... looks like a slot, but ain't hooked up to anything.
5) Unknown factor. I can read reviews on Brand X's 123 board vs Brand Y's 123 board. Each model will have it's own features, and performance benefits. Counterfeit 123s may not even share the same attributes (jacks, ports, slots, layout) as a genuine board.
But what does DFI provide? They provide a product worthy of putting their label on it. They accept responsibility for it. They might not even have designed or manufactured it, but it bears their brand and at the end of they day they are accountable for a product they sold. A good reputation is what people pay money for... assurance that they won't get stuck with a product that they'll have to return or lose their money on.
It doesn't matter if we are talking lightbulbs, toasters, motherboards, macrame coat hangers, if you put your brand on a product, you take the blame if that product is crap.
It's not like the deals were too good to be true. For about $100 from each dealer you could buy a reasonably cheap MB and Chip combo in OEM packaging and a sub par manual.
There was no real solution to ID fake boards, only the general advice of avoiding seedy dealers, which is none too helpful as no matter where you go, you always have to buy something from someone for the first time. And in the age of ordering online, shop loyalty has gone out the window.
Second... how reliable do you think a 80% cheaper board is? I know during the 486 era I was hip to buying some cheap arse boards. We're talking rebranded PC chips crap. Even the socket 754 line which was designed to be the cheap line... even true blue asus boards had a high return rate. I'm sure other
And third... support from a counterfeit board. Bios updates are ultra handy. Even from a non-counterfeit board i've seen a lack of updates in the pentium III class where win2k or xp refused to work (I forget the issue, but something MS and intel hashed out). Imagine a pirated bios with no chance of an update.
And lastly... let's say you "could" get a $30 motherboard. Odds are you're going to have to replace that sucker relatively soon with another $30 board because of failure, lack of updates, or whatever. You're out $60. You might as well have bought a $60 board, which to me represents an older model, overstock, or closeout deal.
So to sum up
1) 80% savings is too good to be true for new gear.
2) You risk failure or damage to your equipment
3) Lack of support and updates make it a headache
4) Under pretty ideal conditions, you'll likely be better off with a realistic discount for a realistic reason.
Seriously I would like to know when the US changed their attitude on ammo. I'm not military but I know that I have ammo that was fetched from the shotting range some decades back, and have spent time with military types who seem to have endless supplies of ammo that they pretty much nicked from uncle sam.
While I never presumed it was official policy to give solders free ammo... there seemed to be much of it floating about, something I didn't object to as it's their job to shoot things.
High explosives? Grenades? That's there I would draw the line.
I'm not complaining. I in fact agree with the actions of a bunch of proactive citizens in this case. But I still see it as a form of vigilantism... just not outright vigilantism.
It's a 17 year old specialty imported sports car.
A group took it upon them selves, to investigate and take measures to assist in the identification and apprehension of the thief and recovery of stolen property. The action they took to me is a form of vigilantism. I wouldn't say they violated due process, though if they had boxed in the wrong car I'm sure they would have to answer for their actions in one way or another.
It's one of those cases where it didn't actually matter what they were called, and where they were located... programs there.... documents there.
2) Sell new software with less annoyance
3) Profit!
There are better ways to implement UAC, it seems pretty clear that their sloppy implementation was designed to get users to complain to their vendors to update their shit to the new paradigm. Problem is, this new paradigm was not fully adopted within the walls of microsoft.
A cult is a small unpopular religion.
A scam is wrapping pseudo-science under the cloak of religion when convenient, and calling it secular when it isn't.