Anonymous Coward wrote:

All I ask is that my hardware has a brand, and is not some weird generic Taiwanese/Chinese crap. There are a few brands that I avoid though, such as VIA/FIC, PCChips and Packard Bell, etc. , if they have a reputation for crappiness.

FIC? Maybe you're thinking of ECS?

I keep mostly everything that comes my way, even most newer crap. But I seem to accumulate the most of:

CPUs: Intel
Motherboards: AOpen (and sometimes PC Chips, but I don't use those boards, only store them)
Sound Cards: Creative Labs
Video Cards: Trident (they grow like mold, I'm finding them everywhere 🤣 )

I'm pretty crazy about branding! Check out my work!

My Windows 98 FE system!

My first Windows XP gaming tower!

My laptop - got me through years of military service, this one did!

My current gaming tower, complete with a GTX 980Ti!

Some extra stickers I had bought for future work:

And one more, this is the re-badging of the E-Machines ITX system that I rebuilt. I'm debating keeping it or selling it.

I am not particularly brand crazy. I am good with most well known brands so long as documentation is availible and good. I have always leaned towards Asus and never had any problems with them. There are brands I tend to avoid. PC Chips and ECS motherboards, powersupplies that come with cases as a general rule. There are other things but really it's more about specific components then it is brands.

meljor wrote:

A lot of bad comments about Asus, while i have those bad experiences with Gigabyte and MSI. Personal preference, and that's how it should be. They can not all make only perfect products, and they can't all be bad either.

It all depends on what era and platform. Those brands are as such, good brands. Asus too.
Every maker has bad batches, or simply cut down on quality at different stanges of their excistance.
I have seen a lot of Asrock being kind of shitty parts. Some times they do produce good stuff.
My brothers old Asrock K7s41 board, worked for like 8 years straight, running every day.
Then he gave it to me, and despite bad caps, it was working for a year more.
Finally died after I changed the big capacitor, located around the Ps/2 ports.

And asrock used really cheap caps.... 8 years of run time, Socket-A with cheap caps.

brostenen wrote:

Every maker has bad batches, or simply cut down on quality at different stanges of their excistance.

^This basically sums it up 😁

FIC? Maybe you're thinking of ECS?[/quote]

No, I do indeed mean FIC. I rather liked ECS, or at least ECS before they bought PCchips.

For retro stuff I exclusively use Intel/Nvidia in later PC systems and earlier ones.. whatever I have, honestly. Don't have enough parts to make that decision. Reason being AMD had worse thermal regulation on the athlons and all mine straight up died, and I wanted a PIII in the day so that's what I use. There's a difference between "It had value at the time" and "Might as well avoid it and get whatever has the best compatability." Which for my uses means intel, a creative card (AWE64 or Live) and an Nvidia video card, pref + voodoo.

These days I avoid AMD because of the heat concerns (ironic how we got here) and I had some bad experiences with Rage coming out and me having an AMD video card.

I also get into Apple stuff a bit, and well... not much choice there heh.

I have my preferences but at the end of the say its what ever I find fun to play with.

my preferences.

cpu: via or Intel
I never liked AMD one bit other then for there servers parts.
gpu: s3 or nvidia. ATI was ok but since the HD cards I stayed clear of them.
HDD: Kingston ssds.

I really take anything I can get, however these brands seem to occur more than others.

CPUs: Intel
GPU: Trident (they're growing like mold, finding them in about 99% of the old PCs I encounter)
Motherboard: PC Chips (ugh, these are growing like mold too. i keep them for their interesting designs, i guess?)
HDD: Seagate, or WD (Maxtors sometimes.)

Anything else is just a unique brand, I guess I'm a varied collector 🤣

retro parts or parts to sell to my clients i dont care.

for any of my 2 computers (HTPC and main PC) it always has been AMD. I rather use VIA than Intel.

My HTPC has a FX6300 since i only play GTA V, FIFA 17 and Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour. It works perfect and i cant complain for what i get for u$s130.

My main PC has a APU A6-7400K and works perfect for the day to day use (internet, multimedia, some basic games, etc)

although i could buy a 6900k it always has been a matter of price - performance, i dont like to waste my money in things im not gonna need and i always intended to build well-balanced pcs.

I really like early Dell and packard bell oem machines and motherboards, they were made to endure. In custom machines, I usually go with what is available, but i kinda like Intel up to PII MMX and from 300-500Mhz i usually go with amd and gigabyte.

I always preferred the alternative choice when everyone would choose the usual one. So I always was more oriented on AMD/ATi configs. For that reason I would have bought a Rage Fury Maxx or a Savage 2000 when everyone would take the Geforce or the K6-2 when everyone would take the Pentium 2.

How crazy? I might even hate good brands, in modern times there seems to be too much fetish and superstition behind their popularity.

I like cooler master cases. I currently have seven and used to have more.

Come to think about it, I did a build once that I named "The fanboy". It was a nearly pure Asus machine. The idea was to create something that a brand oriented person would choose back then, as top parts.

It was an Asus P5A, Asus V3800 TNT2 Pro, Asus SCSI controller, IBM 9gb SCSI HDD's, AWE64-Gold, 128mb Ram and an K6-II-500. All the data cables were even Asus branded. A fun little machine. It had an Asus sticker on the A-Open HQ45 case.

It was not really the goal to do a Fanboy build at first, it was more a kind of fun realisation that I could do a pure Asus build, when I gathered the parts for it. And then the name of the build came to me naturally.

I'm usually not interested in brands, my policy is generally 'whatever works'. But I do have soft spots for some stuff.

Mice= Microsoft, don't know what it is, but whenever I use something else it always breaks after a while. Logitech failed me twice and I've always gone back to Microsoft. My first mouse was a scrolling intellimouse, my Dad's mouse (probably the first one I saw) was a Microsoft mouse, my current mouse is an old optical wheel mouse... yeah, I guess I'm stuck on Microsoft Mice.

Keyboard= I never cared about these till around 2011 I got a Unicomp replica IBM Model M. It's now what I consider to be 'the PC keyboard', everything else is an imitation as far as I care.

Headphones= I got a refurbed Koss 4aa headset. It's a heavy mofo. My neck started to hurt after a year or two of use. But they're my favorite way to listen to audio.

Harddrives= HGST Deskstar, no real reason, I just like the IBM legacy.

Creative= I just like the name "soundblaster" Even though computers don't really need dedicated soundcards anymore I still like my soundblaster.

Controller= I never liked "PC game controllers" I always end up with a USB adapter and either a
-Sega Saturn
-Super Ninendo
-Playstation 2
They work great for emulation purposes.

Camera= I know its silly, but I go for logitech because they own the original quickcam rights

In terms of complete systems I quite like Asus. They're doing cool stuff, at very competitive prices, and have been experimenting a lot these last few years. Netbooks, nettops, combo tablet/keyboard, or even tablet/phone...

I grew up in the years that saw AMD dominate the CPU market with their Athlon line, how they were able to make CPUs both better and cheaper than Intel's. My interest in making a modern gaming computer grew back these last few months, and coincidentally I found out they're about to announce their Zen technology. I'll probably get it, which would have made me jump from an Athlon 64 to Zen while avoiding entirely Intel's Core.

I'm sold to Nvidia though, ever since my original GeForce256. I was too late on the Voodoo train, and and I got the 256 as a budget option when the GeForce 2 came around. I've heard horror stories about ATI drivers and, well, I suppose I know my way around Nvidia software.

jarreboum wrote:

In terms of complete systems I quite like Asus. They're doing cool stuff, at very competitive prices, and have been experimenting a lot these last few years. Netbooks, nettops, combo tablet/keyboard, or even tablet/phone...

I grew up in the years that saw AMD dominate the CPU market with their Athlon line, how they were able to make CPUs both better and cheaper than Intel's. My interest in making a modern gaming computer grew back these last few months, and coincidentally I found out they're about to announce their Zen technology. I'll probably get it, which would have made me jump from an Athlon 64 to Zen while avoiding entirely Intel's Core.

I'm sold to Nvidia though, ever since my original GeForce256. I was too late on the Voodoo train, and and I got the 256 as a budget option when the GeForce 2 came around. I've heard horror stories about ATI drivers and, well, I suppose I know my way around Nvidia software.

Have to defend both of the ''guys'' here a bit:

Athlon XP and Athlon64 (phenom II also) were great, but you missed something because when core2duo came ou it was simply awesome. I had the duo, the quad, thi first i7 and the last years i use i5 2500k. ALL of them i used heavily overclocked and are pretty damn fast. I DO hope that ZEN is the next big AMD thing, they deserve a big break.

ATi had that ''bad driver rep'' for a very very very long time now. Truth is that it works without any real issues (Nvidia did have small things as well) for many generations now.
I had in pci-e : x1900xtx, gts8800 640mb, 8800gts512, 4870, 4890, 5870, gtx580, gtx660 and now R9 290. Both brands have served me well, just go for the best deal.

When it comes to retro's: yes, you're better off with Nvidia imho. And 3Dfx ofcourse 😎