Does your "homebuilt" pc ever lock up, become unresponsive, etc?

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selizo

Limp Gawd
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Mar 16, 2005
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I read about these issues all the time on various computer related forums and I was wondering if this was common at all. In my experience, with a proper reformat, prebuilt pcs are extremely stable. I've been using a Dell for a year and never had to restart it nor have it ever bsod on me. When I push the power button, it turns on. I've never had any "memory error" messages. I've never had anything go wrong with them. Are custom built pcs as reliable?
 
It depends. If I get a dell with faulty memory it'll be about as reliable as my home built machine with faulty memory.

Also, reliability is a very hard statistic to "capture" since very few of us have seen a large enough, representative sample to say "Dell PCs are on average more reliable than homebuilt PCs".
 
if u pick the right parts and quality parts yes they are i had mine running with no problems and i have bulid a friend a computer back in the day a PIII 1000Mhz and still going strong today. they are very reliable if u do it right,take care of it and clean it.
 
custom can be just as reliable if not MORE reliable than prebuilt machines.


I cannot stand shitty oem no-name hardware that comes with prebuilt.
 
Get an emachine and see how reliable it is :p my homebuilt pc's at home are more reliable than the dell's at work.
 
I think the key issue you should be looking at is how people maintain their OS and software, not really hardware...

While I do believer quality of components makes a difference when its comes to longevitiy. Unresponsive computers come from people not cleaning up their software and OS. Making it bog down with lot of loaded programs into memory and spyware.

So in short its more on the person using the computer, in which a custom built computer is built by someone who is computer savvy, and knows how to take care of their machine.
 
UltimaParadox said:
I think the key issue you should be looking at is how people maintain their OS and software, not really hardware...

While I do believer quality of components makes a difference when its comes to longevitiy. Unresponsive computers come from people not cleaning up their software and OS. Making it bog down with lot of loaded programs into memory and spyware.

So in short its more on the person using the computer, in which a custom built computer is built by someone who is computer savvy, and knows how to take care of their machine.
Click to expand...

ultima you hit the issue on the head

most of the time its a software issue not a hardware one
i have a win2k3 server here i think it was last powered down sometime early last year when the ups ran out when the power was off
and the same with my nix server sitting right next to it

they have motored along fine doing the fileserver\email\web\other tasks i give them for over a year each without issues

both home made
i have a cheap dell sitting in the next room running some vms on it
and whle the vms have restarted a few times <3 vm the box has had no issues since early last year as well
 
When I had my gateway, and then my dell, I had BSOD's on a regular basis - all kinds of problems. Most of which were probably my fault as I really wasn't up to speed no what I should/shouldn't do - I also had a wife who downloaded and installed all kinds of bloatware/spyware.

After I found the [H] in 2001 or so, I started educating myself. Put my current wife in check - no more programs unless I approve them. I run diagonstic & anti-spyware programs, & keep up Firewall and Antivirus at all times.

*cross fingers* I have not had a single virus, BSOD, trojan, or anything else bad since I built my first computer in 2002. The only problem I ever had was installing some 1-day old NVIDIA drivers that were not thoroughly tested. Those shut me down and had to reformat/reinstall. Now I know to wait a month when installing new drivers.

Just finished my newest ground-up build Saturday (E6600 system). Everything has gone beautifully, and 6 hours after opening the boxes, I had every program I wanted installed and running perfectly.

Cliffnotes version: Educating yourself about computers is the greatest tool you can have.
 
From a hardware standpoint, off the shelf systems are rock solid as long as you keep the original configuration. Most systems come with a PSU thats just enough to power the configured system. So, if you add anything, you'll be stressing the system more than it was designed to handle. Emachines uses crappy parts (weak psu/ecs mobos), as do the Fry's systems. Dell, HP, Gateway, and other big names usually come with the PSUs I mentioned earlier; they've got just enough juice for the configured system only. The cheaper Emachines/Great Quality systems will most likely have hardware problems a couple years down the line due to the low quality hardware used in the system (weak psu kills crappy ecs boards, etc).
 
enginurd said:
From a hardware standpoint, off the shelf systems are rock solid as long as you keep the original configuration. Most systems come with a PSU thats just enough to power the configured system. So, if you add anything, you'll be stressing the system more than it was designed to handle. Emachines uses crappy parts (weak psu/ecs mobos), as do the Fry's systems. Dell, HP, Gateway, and other big names usually come with the PSUs I mentioned earlier; they've got just enough juice for the configured system only. The cheaper Emachines/Great Quality systems will most likely have hardware problems a couple years down the line due to the low quality hardware used in the system (weak psu kills crappy ecs boards, etc).
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Some Older emachines use ECS boards, they also use many other manufacturers boards... also it's a lot easier to replace one of those boards with another one that does not cost hundreds of dollars

Since Elitegroup is a major player in the OEM market they make boards for whoever orders them and they make the boards to the BOM of that company, BOM = Bill Of Materials. So if a company says "Ah shit, lets save $2 per motherboard and use cheap ass Chinese capacitors" ABIT, JETWAY, MSI, APPLE COMPUTER... ECS will say "Whatever you say boss"

The OEMs tend to use Bestec PSU's, though not all do... The ones that use a normal ATX Bestec are very easy to fix, take the bestec out and buy whatever ATX power supply you like, pop it in and you're done.

Saying they are all junk is complete hyperbolic BULLSHIT
​
 
selizo said:
I read about these issues all the time on various computer related forums and I was wondering if this was common at all. In my experience, with a proper reformat, prebuilt pcs are extremely stable. I've been using a Dell for a year and never had to restart it nor have it ever bsod on me. When I push the power button, it turns on. I've never had any "memory error" messages. I've never had anything go wrong with them. Are custom built pcs as reliable?
Click to expand...

People seldom post, I buit my machine last year and have never had a problem with it, forum posts are typically made by people having issues. This forum is mainly populated by do-it-yourself type people and high performance enthuists. So looking at forums skews the picture.

Glad your Dell is working well for you. I have been at least 6 peoples houses in last year to help them restore their Dells, mainly from AD ware infestations etc. However the machines work fine and are pretty reliable.

Custom built PC are even more reliable as they are built from higher quality parts in general.

What is confusing you is that most of us are like hot rodders. your Dell is a Chevy and will get you were you want to go at a nice sedate speed, in comfort, reliabily. Our machines are Corvettes with engines completly rebuilt for speed and performance, and we like to run 140mph in the 60mph zones. So stuff breaks. However when we run 100mph in 60mph zones the machines give long reliable life due to the high quality components.

We also like to tinker which tends to expose unexpected issues ever now and then. Also there is a large contingent of (I suspect) people like you who have seen a Corvette flash by and want one. So they buy one without the knowledge and experence to tune it up properly. This is not bad, we all have to learn, and you see their posts everywhere.

The software thing is a very valid point too.
 
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