Well, I've just encountered perhaps the most extreme example of poor quality workmanship.
Yesterday I was playing crysis on high settings for the first time thanks to my lovely new xfx card, when all of a sudden I heard a loud clunking noise inside my pc, and before I could hit the power switch, the whole system shut down, which I'm sure has happened to some of you and is a terrifying thing to happen, especially if you've invested in an expensive rig and lack the money to go replacing parts willy nilly.
When I opened my case (a tower), my CPU heatsink was hanging by a thread from my socket. Naturally I assumed the latch had failed, so imagine my surprise when it turned out my bog standard AMD coolers latch had, in fact, managed to rip off the little nubbin that the lock down mechanism attaches to.
Thankfully I was able to find the bit that broke off, and when I checked it out, it was very obvious it had broken off because of a massive bubble within the plastic.
Now, yes, some may argue that it's an extremely rare sort of error, and can be blaimed on a random error during fabrication, but it really annoyed me for the following reason.
Let's look at it this way: If you have an upright case, your cpu is at the top of the board, and attached to it is a big, heavy, sharp edged lump of solid metal. Beneath that is your northbridge, your GPU and various other delicate pieces of expensive technology.
So I ask you this. why, oh WHY would a company associated with good products (gigabyte), suddenly decide it's okay not to run quality standard checks on the ONE part on their board that stops EXACTLY this kind of rig killing scenario happening?
Several hours later, half a tube of superglue, a heat lamp, and 2 fused fingers later, my rig is back to normal, but due to the now unstable nature of my rig, I've had to attach a low profile, lightweight cooler to the board, and bosh on a mack off fan just to get my rig to its previously respectable 40C idle overclocked temp.
Anyone ever had one of these stupid, needless errors before? I'm sure you've got your own examples, so please share!:wavey:
Yesterday I was playing crysis on high settings for the first time thanks to my lovely new xfx card, when all of a sudden I heard a loud clunking noise inside my pc, and before I could hit the power switch, the whole system shut down, which I'm sure has happened to some of you and is a terrifying thing to happen, especially if you've invested in an expensive rig and lack the money to go replacing parts willy nilly.
When I opened my case (a tower), my CPU heatsink was hanging by a thread from my socket. Naturally I assumed the latch had failed, so imagine my surprise when it turned out my bog standard AMD coolers latch had, in fact, managed to rip off the little nubbin that the lock down mechanism attaches to.
Thankfully I was able to find the bit that broke off, and when I checked it out, it was very obvious it had broken off because of a massive bubble within the plastic.
Now, yes, some may argue that it's an extremely rare sort of error, and can be blaimed on a random error during fabrication, but it really annoyed me for the following reason.
Let's look at it this way: If you have an upright case, your cpu is at the top of the board, and attached to it is a big, heavy, sharp edged lump of solid metal. Beneath that is your northbridge, your GPU and various other delicate pieces of expensive technology.
So I ask you this. why, oh WHY would a company associated with good products (gigabyte), suddenly decide it's okay not to run quality standard checks on the ONE part on their board that stops EXACTLY this kind of rig killing scenario happening?
Several hours later, half a tube of superglue, a heat lamp, and 2 fused fingers later, my rig is back to normal, but due to the now unstable nature of my rig, I've had to attach a low profile, lightweight cooler to the board, and bosh on a mack off fan just to get my rig to its previously respectable 40C idle overclocked temp.
Anyone ever had one of these stupid, needless errors before? I'm sure you've got your own examples, so please share!:wavey:
