Poll: Your computer's weakest link...

Turing '88

New member
Feb 24, 2011
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RadiusXd said:
how does it screw you over more then if your current drive fails? at least they last more write cycles then an SSD.
Because if either fail you lose everything not backed up! With two separate drives you don't have that problem. I've got 4 identical drives, and two other identical ones, but I decided to choose reliability and simplicity over speed. Easy to pop in or out a HDD for backups and upgrades too without messing about.

OT: Deffo my motherboard, I fried my orig one so had to get a cheap replacement.
 

Evilcarrot

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May 13, 2011
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My video card. Everything else is fine and up to date, but my video card is absolute crap. I can't play any games released past maybe 2006 because of it...
 

Zipa

batlh bIHeghjaj.
Dec 19, 2010
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The weakest link for me right now which I plan on fixing tonight is my CPU stock fan , it can't shift the heat fast enough. Got my new akasa CPU cooler today though so problem should be solved
 

Matt Work

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Oct 8, 2010
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Voted - "Other"

Mines weakest link is the cheap as chips MicroATX motherboard... in a fullsize desktop case... that can only handle 4gig 'o ram lol. looks comedy given the size of the case ;)
 

The Artificially Prolonged

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Jul 15, 2008
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CPU fan, I haven't got round to fitting a better one, so I'm using the standard one that cake with my cpu and it can get quite noisy when playing demanding games.
 

Haz88

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Nov 19, 2009
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My motherboard hands down, mostly due to physical constraints more than anything else. It's a 4 year old no name from the time before double wide graphics cards, so right now my graphics card blocks one PCI-port (and making one unusable, as I'd block the cooling on the card if I put something in the one PCI-port that isn't blocked) and two SATA-ports. The rest of my computer, though not high end at all, can hold it's own on just above average settings.

OS: Win7 64-bit
Graphics: GeForce GTX 460 1GB
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2,4Ghz
Ram: 4Gb
 

Atheist.

Overmind
Sep 12, 2008
631
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My lovely laptop has been able to run everything it has encountered on maximum settings to date. Our only issues are running out of HDD space. That and a faster processor, because emulating some of my PS2 games gets a bit laggy. (I own all of the PS2 games I emulate, I am in no way advocating piracy.)
 

Zhadramekel

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Apr 18, 2010
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This doesn't really affect my PC gaming too much but often my connection to the wireless network in my house cuts out randomly and I have to restart my laptop about five times to get it working again.
 

xXGeckoXx

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Jan 29, 2009
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thick doona said:
I bought an ATI graphics card. It has these horrible drivers. My screen will just freeze and sound keeps going in the background. My mouse cursor still moves. It's pretty weird.
Meh this only happened to me during ME2. And ME 2 turned out to be the cause.
 

Denamic

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Aug 19, 2009
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The HDD has been the weakest link since 2000.
While other components operate at GB/s, an HDD operate at ~50MB/s under duress.
 

Emilin_Rose

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Aug 8, 2009
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sadly my computer only runs old shareware titles. This computer struggles with almost any modern programming. even some flash games are slow. I'd blame vista, but really this just goes along with the rest of my broken stuff that somehow only i can make work, so i think really this one is another one for which i can blame god.

The weakest link would have to be the one holding the casing together since it's breaking and falling apart, and now a little wire somewhere isn't where/doing what it should be, causing the screen to flicker or go black. When the latter happens, sometimes the music{and by extension, everything else) keeps going like nothing is wrong, so hypothetically, i could still do stuff, if the screen weren't all black. When it flickers however, there is no hope, the music stops, repeating the less than 1/5th of a second of music it was on and the whole thing has to be shut down via holding the power button for several seconds. This is also the fix for the former. It's frustrating.
 

[atomi|c|adaver]

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Oct 8, 2009
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My graphics card...AAGH
My laptop has 8GB RAM, and has a nice-ish ATI Radeon HD series as well as a standard Intel graphics processor, so i should be good in theory

It's supposed to be able to switch freely between the two adapters for optimal battery and graphics, BUT the bloody thing outright refuses to switch at times, and the cards won't run OPENGL drivers.

OS: Win7 64-bit
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 6490M & Mobile Intel(R) HD Graphics
Processor: Intel Core i5
Ram: 8GB
 

Merkavar

New member
Aug 21, 2010
2,429
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my processor is the weakest link

c2d e6750. only problem is that to up grade it ill need a new motherboard but i broke my videocard so its now stuck in the motherboard so to upgrade one part ill need to upgrade 3.
 

tahrey

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Sep 18, 2009
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Well, the whole thing is a bit stale now, but the video card was never more than "satisfactory" even when I bought it (vs a strong CPU and average-but-upgradeable RAM & HDD).

Ultraportable laptop though, I think it's probably given a free pass on that. Some games work quite well if you cut the FX down to minimum, but others just die on their backsides - with somewhat less than 100% CPU use - because of the sheer number of polys... it just can't cope.

Is there such a thing as a mini-PCI upgrade card? Like, would an older (& otherwise dead) gaming laptop have one I could salvage?
 

GaryH

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Sep 3, 2008
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My processor. I have 8 cores, which are really quite impressive when working in tandem. It's just a shame that basically nothing actually uses all of them and they are fairly pathetic on their own.
 

Darth Sea Bass

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Mar 3, 2009
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I'd say the graphics card was the weakest link with ram coming a close second. Though the thread i started a few weeks back about looking for a new graphics card i posted the specs and the whole system came in for a kicking.

I have ordered a xfx hd 5770 though so i'm hoping the graphics card situation will be rectified soon.
 

RadiusXd

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Jun 2, 2010
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Jamie Wroe said:
RadiusXd said:
how does it screw you over more then if your current drive fails? at least they last more write cycles then an SSD.
Because if either fail you lose everything not backed up! With two separate drives you don't have that problem. I've got 4 identical drives, and two other identical ones, but I decided to choose reliability and simplicity over speed. Easy to pop in or out a HDD for backups and upgrades too without messing about.

OT: Deffo my motherboard, I fried my orig one so had to get a cheap replacement.
but you should be backing up the important stuff anyway, and if the drive with the OS fails, then games still won't work till you reinstall.
I don't know what this obsession is with living in fear of hard drive failure, it's never happened to me, and I enjoy a significant performance boost, not too much for a 32 gig ubs or blank dvd disks. if the critical files you can't reinstall exceed that then maby you should be running a RAID 1+0 array.

RAID fixes everything.