Results from another mass build

[Mercutio]

For no particular reason, here's the numbers for the classroom PCs I built in December.

Number of PCs built: 60
All parts save the case came from Newegg.com.

Antec NSK3380 case
Intel 946GZis motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2GHz
Crucial 2GB DDR2/667 DIMM
NEC Optiarc 18x SATA DVD Burner
Seagate Barracuda AS-series 250GB SATA hard disk

The nice thing about this is that it's all high quality brand name parts.

So, what broke or didn't work out of the box?

One motherboard. Newegg also shipped me four that were different from the others (Three Intel DG31PR boards and one DG33BUC). I replaced the odd boards.

One hard disk had enough bad sectors that it could not complete its disk image. All of my drives were in full Styrofoam case packing, 15* drives to a 20-disk pack. A second drive had its power connector snapped off by an inexperienced "helper."

Four DIMMs. A staggering amount of bad RAM, based on past experiences. I expected better from Crucial, but on the other hand, these were some of the cheapest DIMMs I could buy on the day I bought them.

Absolutely all my cases/power supples and all my DVD burners worked perfectly, which thrills me to no end, since shipping Power supplies back makes me sad.

If we look around and compare, I think the defect rate on these "superb, name brand-type" parts is pretty much the same as what I ran into on the cheapies I built over the summer.


* Here's the odd bit: I bought six Seagate Barracuda ES 750GB drives (the expensive ones instead of the slow and cheap ASes) at the same time, that were packaged with the other drives, shipped in the casing. Four of those drives have RMA-able issues. One DOA, two with bad sectors and one that won't format.

 

[ddrueding]

Thanks for the info on the build. That is a very nice spec for lab machines. Did Newegg actually ship you boards other than the ones you ordered? Or were the wrong boards in the right box?

* Here's the odd bit: I bought six Seagate Barracuda ES 750GB drives (the expensive ones instead of the slow and cheap ASes) at the same time, that were packaged with the other drives, shipped in the casing. Four of those drives have RMA-able issues. One DOA, two with bad sectors and one that won't format.

That is a huge # of RMAs. I would assume Newegg got a bad batch? RMAing them back to Seagate should resolve that issue.

 

[paugie]

Number of PCs built: 60

If I ever did this, I would not be able to look at a PC for a month!

Well, it's either that or I'd be addicted and if I had no PC's to assemble, I'd start to eat my hair (is that what addicts do?)

And what happened to all the Samsung drives waiting to be purchased?

 

[Bozo]

I had four motherboards that were boxed wrong by Intel. Box was right but board was wrong.
It happens I guess. Make a couple of million motherboards and something is bound to go wrong.

Bozo

 

[jtr1962]

If I built that many systems in a month I think my hands would be practically immobile for about the next year. I guess you don't have CTS, at least not yet, anyway. If you're really lucky you're not prone to it, either.

Interesting numbers. I guess it just proves the anecdotal evidence that name brands aren't always all they're cut out to be.

 

[Bozo]

I think it was mentioned in another thread that those name brnad boards will probably still be running long after the cheapo's die.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Mercutio]

Thanks for the info on the build. That is a very nice spec for lab machines. Did Newegg actually ship you boards other than the ones you ordered? Or were the wrong boards in the right box?

Right box, wrong board inside.
Although, it's really freakin' hard to tell the difference. They all look the same except the DGwhatever boards don't have parallel ports. When you're building so many computers at a time, you don't immediately notice little things like that.

For what it's worth, I only built 36 of them myself. The other 24 were supervised by me (and then rebuilt when they weren't done right, not that I'm bitter).

That is a huge # of RMAs. I would assume Newegg got a bad batch? RMAing them back to Seagate should resolve that issue.

Five have failed now, I think. One of them started making repetitive chirping noises today. I'm really pissed about this. I've had a total of eight Seagate 750GB drives in my possession for any length of time and six have failed. That's almost WD-like in its suckitude. I'm going to RMA them all to Newegg, who will at least give me new and not refurbed drives from them.

In the meantime, my massive collection of Samsung and Hitachi 400 and 500GB drives has gone rolling along with nary a failure.

 

[ddrueding]

That is a bad record for 750s. I have 10 Seagate 750GB drives in operation at home 24/7. The only one that failed was in your possession at the time (not that I blame you - the USB enclosure was quite dodgy).

 

[sechs]

It sounds like Seagate is trying to ruin their reliability image...

I got three 750GB drives for my NAS. One failed within a week.

 

[Mercutio]

Seagate had a reliability image?

One of my replacement 750s couldn't complete a format, either...

 

[sechs]

At least a couple years ago, they did. Maybe they're trying to fit into those Maxtor shoes....