Poll: Your computer's weakest link...

[No_Remainders]

With 4 GB of RAM and 512 MB of VRAM, the dual core 2.0 GHz processor isn't as good as it could be.

 

[Fleischer]

I built my PC as a cheap, mid end box in 2007, now it's pretty much meeting minimum system requirements for most games. Oh and it has Vista, something I desperately need to change. Anyone got a copy of windows 7 I can have for free?

To remedy your OS problem, there might be a fairly cheap solution. If you are a student, you can get a big discount. Might be worth checking out - http://www.microsoft.com/student/en/us/software/windows/default.aspx

 

[Quijiboh]

When I first got my laptop it was the processor (Dual 1.6GHz), but after 3½ years of use it's got to be the fan, which seems to be dying a death no matter how many times I blow clean air through it.

 

[Sunrider]

My data transfer rate on my C:, Which is kinda weird, because I have an SSD...

 

[intheweeds]

I guess It's a few minor things...

I have 4 gigs of DDR3, I don't notice any gameplay issues at all except occasionally Civ IV chugs a little when i zoom in on units. I want to get another 2x2 kit. They're cheap these days.

I kinda cheaped out on cooling though. I'm just running a stock heatsink on my quadcore and i feel like i should probably protect my investment a little better. I also need to improve my fan situation. It's never had a problem, but I can't help but worry sometimes during long TF2 sessions.

All in all not too bad. I'm with the others also who are looking at SSD's. My harddrive is what drops my 'experience index' down. But luckily games don't seem to need to worry about that too much.

 

[Ralphfromdk]

I'm the weakest part in my pc set up. There. I said it.

*goes to cry in a corner*

 

[cubikill]

I have a very powerful gaming PC, got it this summer andall the parts were mire or less top of the line. I saved up for awhile and I didn't skimp out on any of the parts. But it's week like is it's in the mail, or boxes in my room.

 

[Alcamonic]

Feeling like my Duo core processor is slowly losing the battle against time.
I'm just comparing my rig to the req stuff of games on the market now.

Other than that I'd say that my harddrive is getting a bit old, but my motherboard is holding me back from getting a newer one.

 

[jprf]

To my eternal shame, my graphics card is an intel integrated chipset.
It really struggles with most basic games, which is a pity because it's processor/ram etc isn't that terrible.

 

[Extragorey]

My power supply. It's only 700 W, so it'll probably bite the dust before anything else. Next is probably the hard drive, since I have no RAID configuration or SSDs in my desktop.

700W is plenty, and enough for most gaming rigs, as long as there's enough power on the 12V rails.

My rig has a 600W PSU, GTX560 Ti, Intel Core i7 2600, 8 GB RAM... It's all pretty good, but the weakest link is unquestionably the hard drive. Or hard drives, I should say - there's 4 in there.
An 80GB, a 250GB, and two 1TB, all differing speeds.
An SSD would be great, but they're really still too expensive for the storage size you get.

Also, you forgot the screen size in the poll. It's important to have a nice big screen! Well, mostly.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Hard drive. I just have a standard 1TB one, and I'm going to reformat soon and have my 1TB and a 2TB in it, but still won't make it much better. Solid state drives are still way too expensive for me...

Going from the Windows Experience Index (rating 1.0 to 7.9):
Processor: 7.2
RAM: 7.3
Graphics: 7.8
Gaming Graphics: 7.8
Primary HDD: 5.9

 

[Quaxar]

Weakest link? My whole computer is so bad, Anne Robinson would throw it out in the first round!

I'm going to buy a new PC though. Soon.

 

[Turing '88]

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.

I do backup, I have about 6TB of backed up data. That's not the issue, I was just pointing out that you now have twice the failure rate compared to having just one drive(maybe not exactly, but thereabouts) and lose all your data vs just losing half with two separate drives.

Anyway I admit I've never had a drive fail me personally either, but we all know it happens, and I've seen it happen to others. I also change drives semi regularly, which would ruin a raid setup and require a mass purchase of new drives rather than the gradual upgrade process I go through now.

The speed advantage is minor too, my PC boots up fast enough. Yes it would boot faster and load times would decrease but you're very rarely going to get any extra fps in games.

RAID is great for some, it's NOT for everyone though.

 

[nekroskoma]

my HDD is 500 gb, i didn't want to exceed my external drive, now i think i should have got a bigger one

and i need to upgrade my linux side to 64 bit, but the newer version of ubuntu from what i heard have stopped using gnome by default. Sure it easy to install but the reasons why they stopped and the time to install and reconfig is worrisome

 

[Alpha Maeko]

AMD Phenom II x6 3.3ghz
AMD Radeon HD 5850 1 GB
G.Skill 8 GB DDR3 1333
Western Digital 128 GB SSD
Western Digital 1 TB 7200 RPM
Seasonic X650 80PlusGold

It's hard to say which part is the "weakest", though I'm planning on upgrading my video card to the latest generation at some point.

 

[Balgus]

core i5 2500k 3.33Ghz
4Gb 1333MHZ ram
AMD 2GB 6950 DDR5
and my rubbish 500Gb main drive <---- all of the above is Great but is bottle necked by this because a solid state drive is just too expensive for so little storage

if you can secure a second Identical drive and are willing to reformat you could double the space and speed with RAID. your motherboard would have to support it, but I don't know if there are many that do not.

Don't think I will though RAID, if it fails utterly screws you over and sometimes my second hard drives doesn't want to wake up when my computer boots up from sleep mode so don't want to risk it =)

how does it screw you over more then if your current drive fails? at least they last more write cycles then an SSD.

was just saying that one of my HDDs fails to wake up half the time so if one raid drive doesn't work then then computer is basically a brick till it next decides to wake up both HDDs
plus has twice the chance of failing than one HDD has =)

 

[EHKOS]

Graphics card. ATI Radeon HD 4550. Next comes the weak 250 PSU. After that it would be my quad core 2.3GHz phenom. I see no reason to complain about my 8 Gigs of RAM tho.

 

[krychek57]

My Sata 7200rpm drives are my choke point, raid 0 is useless for data security and raid 5 can only do so much :-/

 

[chrono16]

Yeah my old Toshiba was still sporting 512mb RAM lol and a 1.7ghz single core Centrino. I couldnt even play Half Life 2 without crippling lag. I upped the RAM to 1 gig. But then it overheated and died about 2 years ago. It had a nice run of about 5 years. Then I bought a Gateway FX laptop with 4 gig RAM and 360 gig HDD,Nvidea GeForce 9800M GTS with 1gig RAM after it died. The processor is still a bit sluggish. its a Dual Core 2.27 Ghz. But for a 2 year old laptop im still very happy with it.