Budget Spares

[Mercutio]

Anyone out there have recommendations for decent-quality spare or replacement parts?

I recently bought 20 Via Envy-based PCI sound cards from some vendor in Hong Kong, because I know that chipset is all-around superior to anything that's shipped for onboard sound on a motherboard under $200. They had to come from Hong Kong 'cause I couldn't find anyone else still carrying a part with that chipset.

Power supplies are always a problem for me. I want to buy Seasonic or at the very least HEC, but those are often out of my customers' price range. Sometimes I gamble and get lucky. Other times, I'm just replacing a replacement six months later.

NICs are another sore spot. Realtek NICs frankly suck. Marvell isn't much better. Those two chips seem to be on the majority of motherboards these days. Even Intel motherboards often have realtek chips for LAN.

USB 802.11 NICs? I can't keep them around. I try to buy the $6 Netgear units from Woot when they come up, but I can re-sell the $18 Rosewill NICs from Newegg for $40 and people don't even bat an eye.

 

[ddrueding]

I typically don't have a problem getting people into a higher budget after something has failed. I just phrase it as "what you had obviously wasn't good enough, here is something better". This means Seasonic power supplies, Intel NICs, and Auzentech sound cards. If someone has a desktop, I will pressure them into getting it cabled in. If a laptop loses its wireless, I'll replace the internal card. I really don't like wireless for permanent installations.

 

[CougTek]

I use In Win IP-P350DQ3 350W power supplies for replacement units. They are 80+ certified and relatively inexpensive (~35U$).

Realtek NICs are well supported (drivers included in all Microsoft OSes) and people don't care about the performance of their network connection most of the time. The main reason is that ISPs don't provide anywhere near the rate a 5$ NIC can sustain.

 

[MaxBurn]

I like ddrueding upgrade strategy after a failure.

Are the Realtek and Marvell NIC's failing? If so how many of those are because of unprotected lines and power or other electrical problems that weren't the NIC's fault?

 

[LiamC]

I dislike Marvell with a passion. Seemed to be popular with Intel x965 chipsets. I had an issue with a Gigabyte P965 that would give "Delayed Write Failed" errors with the Marvell plugged into a gigabit switch--D-Link DGS-1005D. Gigabyte blamed everyone even though it was repeatable. Sold the Gigabyte and have bought ASUS since--they've been using Attansic (Atheros) controllers. Picked up an ASUS p5B-Deluxe (P965) which also had a Marvell NIC in it like the Gigabyte. Guess what happened when I plugged it into another 1005D? Same thing. Downloaded the latest Marvell drivers (10.5.xx series) that weren't (and still aren't) available from either Gigabyte or ASUS and the NIC worked--but jeez, what a pain in the ar$e.

 

[Fushigi]

Merc, believe it or not, Best Buy has an Envy-based PCI sound card. I just used one to replace the mobo sound I couldn't get to work on my wife's XP PC. It retails for $25, which is I'm sure a fair bit more than what you paid for the HK source (probably even after the shipping).

I've also had decent luck under both XP & Vista with an $18 Airlink 802.11n wireless adapter from Fry's (God, their site stinks). I've given up on Netgear after too many issues with their routers failing and with the drivers for the PCI 802.11G adapter I had been using in my wife's machine before I switched to the Airlink.

 

[Mercutio]

The boards I bought have a SPDIF and a TOSLink connector, and I think the total per board worked out to $11 apiece including the international shipping. The digital I/O plus the very high quality of the sound chip make them a natural choice for media PCs; I don't want to inflict Creative drivers on someone, and I have a feeling that the people I'm selling these to aren't going to notice the improvement from an Auzentech card.

Early this month I built a media PC for my dad's 61st birthday. He told all his brothers, and now they all want them. This is why I ordered the cards in the first place; I was specifically interested in the digital outputs.

Anyway... yes, I see PCs that have lost Ethernet or USB functionality fairly often, and I've observed RealTek cards to have serious issues with 10/100Mbit negotiation at times. I can't pin down any specific scenario where it happens, but I've seen it several times now, and I haven't found a permanent cure, other than to use a better NIC. Unfortunately, the cheapies all seem to use Realtek or Marvell, just like motherboards, or they're the obnoxious Linksys/DLink jobs where they use the same part name to describe hardware that could use six or eight different drivers.

Most of the PCs that *I* build are inexpensive, $300 - $450 (apparently less than ddrueding spends on the disk drives in his systems). When the system cost that much, it's very hard to justify a $70 power supply. I'm trying to find a decent $25 - $30 unit. Much as I preach the gospel of the quality PSU, it's not always pragmatic to buy them.

Netgear's routers: The range on their antenna-less pre-N routers sucks. No surprise, right? What Netgear's routers have that's really interesting are excellent options for parental controls, like content blocking based on keyword in requested web pages, and the ability to turn ports on and off based on time of day. I thought that was a really interesting way to make a distinct product.

 

[Handruin]

If you like those features in the netgear, take a look at the D-Link DIR-655. I have one of these and I've been very happy with its performance and reliability (full GigE on all 4 ports including the WAN side). I connect a wireless G bridge through two floors with full bars including my laptop with no problems.

 

[Mercutio]

I have a DIR-615 in my office right now. I note that it has the same retardedly over-simplified firmware as every other DLink I've ever used. I can't even do something as simple as change the autoconfigured DNS server on it.

 

[Handruin]

I know nothing of the 615, but there are numerous features in the 655. If you want to check for yourself, dlink offers an admin interface demo.

 

[P5-133XL]

I too have a D-Link 655. It's been good to me for a couple of years which has supprised me because I had always thought D-Link, as a brand, had poor reliability. Originally I bought it for the QOS for folding while gaiming and it had Gigabit switch: It helped with the hogging of BW by folding when sending and receiving WU's, but needs more.

The only real feature I feel is missing is Jumbo frames.

Then there are minor issues such as everything in the log has a priority of [info]; It has a less than easy method of dealing WPA; Like most Wireless+Wired routers it seperates the wireless and wired into seperate broadcast domains so that WINS has trouble passing through.