Return rates of motherboards, power supplies, HDD, GPUs and RAM

[jono256]

Hey there CFC, here's a link to the return rates of motherboards, power supplies, RAM, video cards, HDDs and RAM from a major French e-tailer. The stats come from sales from September 2008 to March 2009, sample is over 500 for manufacturer and over 100 for individual models.
Don't buy Maxtor or Seagate!
http://translate.google.com/transla...s-composants.html&sl=fr&tl=en&history_state0=

They do this every 6 months.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Dear god, another 'Dont buy Maxtor or Seagate.' Havent heard that one a million times. They fixed the issue, and the HDD's now work fine. The statistics are also extremely outdated. In the computer world, 6 months is a very, very long time. Issues have since been fixed, there are likely new models out, or at the very least, new revisions of older models. In 6 months we went from a GTX 260 being a major investment to now almost an entry-class card based on price.

Additionally, I do not see any major US retailers, which kinda throws these statistics off. For instance, where's EVGA for graphics cards?

 

[jono256]

Yes, it doesn't have all the manufacturers and all models, is there a website that has that?
As for Maxtor and Seagate, the page explains the results and states the firmware problem. It also notes the Samsung SpinPoint T500 as being crap.
However, looking at the motherboards: Asus is the best on P45, which is a good choice since Corei5/7 is still an expensive platform.
Of course if you buy the newest and bestest it is out of date, but mainstream parts are usually the best on performance/price, especially a few months after release when prices have stabilized.

I'm not saying this is buying gospel, it is useful in deciding between similar parts from different brands.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Ironically, for hardware parts, I prefer anecdotal evidence from the community. It points out a more-real world usage for them.

Again, for the hard drives. They are fixed. As in, the firmware problem does not exist anymore, at all. Its gone, out of here, a mere bad memory.

Mainstream parts come and go about every 3 months. The lineup changes as high-end parts drop to mainstream, and some mainstream parts are discontinued or drop into the bargain bin.

Finally, return rates do not necessarily mean quality problems. They could mean that that seller has shipping issues. Newegg used to ( I think they changed it now) ship OEM hard drives wrapped in a single layer of bubble wrap and thrown into a box of peanuts. Of course, about a quarter of the drives were DOA, simply because of the way they were packaged. And because majority of OEM drives sold were by seagate and maxtor, they had a much higher return rate.

You really need to look at what the community at large thinks of a product, not the statistics one e-tailer compiles for you.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Doesn't Seagate own Maxtor? So the numbers are similar as they're from the same place?

On my old computer, the Maxtor drive was extremely noisy. LOL

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Seagate bought Maxtor fairly recently, so yes.