most reliable manufacturers????

[xr4man]

i have been tasked with building a media server for a friend who runs an online radio station.

my question is who makes the most reliable components

psu - ?
ram - ?
motherboard - ?
hard drives - ?


thanks for any input.

[Fuganater]

RAM is deff G.SKill. I have never had issues with them. Been using them for years.

HDD really depends on the size. I have a pair of 1TB Samsung that have been great. WD Green drives are also pretty good. I'll be buying their 2TB ones for my server.

Mobo really depends on the socket. I've been using XFX for the past 4 motherboards (5 years) and their warranty is beyond anything I've experienced.

PSU depend on your taste I think. I've used XFX, Antec, Corsair and now OCZ. Never had any issues with any of them.

[xr4man]

i plan on using a socket am3 mobo. and for drives, i'm thinking 3 500G drives, but that depends on how much storage he needs. (i'm planning on running them in raid 5) there will be a 4th drive as well that will house windows and his software. but that drive will probably be smaller.

[diluzio91]

Ram: Gskill, mushkin (more $ though), Corsair

HDD: i'm a firm believer in purchasing western digital drives.

SSD: OCZ

Mobo: for AM3 i would reccomend gigabyte. asus seems to have a higher long term failure rate.

PSU: Corsair, PowerPC and Cooling, Seasonic.

[Blibbax]

psu - C'Master, Corsair
ram - Kingston, Corsair
motherboard - Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte
hard drives - WD

WD in particular actually - I've some ancient WD drives that have gone through a fair bit of abuse in and out of systems.

[xr4man]

this is great stuff.

stephanie, need more input!

[Cale_Hagan]

interesting. i must have had the worst luck with wd drives, ive had so many of them die.... only others have died are a 500GB seagate, and a 500GB 7200 rpm laptop hdd, but i think its my laptop's fault, as a ssd i put in there is freaking out, im going to have to find a way to check the sata controller on my hdx 18...

anyways, i honestly think hitachi is the most reliable. i have a bunch of them, only the laptop one was a fluke, but it worked for a good while, and as i said before, i think its my laptop, not the drive itself.
EDIT: when i heard western digital was to takeover hitachi, i started a "sata 3 hitachi 2tb drive" fund to save up for a few of the pre-wd takeover drives

[x88x]

WD in particular actually - I've some ancient WD drives that have gone through a fair bit of abuse in and out of systems.

How ancient is 'ancient'? Because I've worked with a lot of their drives from the ~500MB-6GB era (mid-late 90's) and those are far and away the most unreliable drives I have ever used...well, except for deathstars... Because of that, for the longest time I refused to buy any WD drives, though now I am perfectly happy with all the WD drives I have that were made in the last 10 years or so.

OT, I would say
PSU: Corsair, PC Power & Cooling, XFX, Cooler Master, Antec, Kingwin, Thermaltake...pretty much as long as you get a higher-end unit made in the last couple years by any of these, it should be fine. Check reviews on JohnnyGuru and HardOCP before you buy though.
RAM: Corsair, Kingwin, OCZ, Mushkin, G.Skill...tbh, I haven't had any RAM fail on me in over 5 years, regardless of manufacturer...
MBB: As long as you go for a middle-of-the-road MBB, (ie, one that is not bottom-of-the-barrel so they weren't using the cheapest possible parts but not one that has extra stuff to support overclocking and whatnot) you'll probably be fine with anything. Just check reviews on whatever specific model you're looking at first.
HDD: WD or Samsung for SATA; Seagate for SAS or SCSI

[Konrad]

Many Gigabyte motherboards advertise UD3/UD4/etc designations. These are Gigabyte-invented marketing, not an official industry standard or specification (that I know of) ... they basically promise greater system longevity through higher-quality build materials, good capacitors, redundant BIOS/firmware chips, etc etc. I honestly don't know how much of this is hype vs truth, but I can say that I've used a fair number of (middly) Gigabyte motherboards for years without suffering hardware failures.

I've only used Corsair, Kingston, and generic RAM. I tend to buy RAM with an eye for highest-performance-yet-bang-for-the-buck (ie, basically about 2nd-5th place down the list of RAM types I really want to buy when I can't justify the exponential price jumps for top performers). Every RAM hardware failure (aside from those I caused myself through unwise experimentation) that I've experienced has been with the cheap/OEM/generic RAM sticks ... I think these days only the cheapest crap bottomfeeder electronics will suffer "factory" hardware failures. Assuming it's operated within spec, without overclocking, without tinkering with SPD firmware and voltages and soldering new circuit blocks onto the mobo ...

PSU, HDD, etc always publish detailed specs and MTBF-styled figures (for enterprise/corporate-level buyers) which suggest how long I can reasonably expect the part to survive, at least in comparison with other parts of the same general type. I always check that the various efficiency/eco certs are on the PSU, and the UL one, and I always look up the UL data to see the actual specs as obtained from their controlled tests, plus who actually made the device because even the trusted brand names sometimes lie. HDDs I'll admit I tend to buy whatever's on special/clearance, again bang-for-buck approach, but always some "big" brand name, and I never have any hardware problems with them.

Improving the factory-installed cooling on all these (and all other) parts of your machine will ensure greatest possible service life. Just a few extra dollars for another fan, heatsink, TIM, or whatever can add years to component service life.

[Twigsoffury]

been using MSi mainboards since the mid 1990's never a single issue with any of them.

some of them have developed quirks. but never had one fail.


graphics cards it seems are just luck of the draw. prob 30% of the Evga cards i've bought over the years has failed.