[2003-07-25] Unnecessarily Obsolete Hardware

The PC Hardware scene is crazy - my home PC is around 3.5 years old and it is already very difficult to find upgrades for it, especially CPU and RAM. I thought I finally got a great deal on two PC133 256MB RAM modules off eBay, but to my utter dismay found out that my PC recognised only half the capacity of each module! After much research on the web, I found out that not all PC133 256 MB RAM modules are the same as far as the Intel 440BX chipset, that lies at the heart of my ASUS P3B-F motherboard, is concerned. The most irritating thing about this is that there is no easy way of telling whether a particular PC133 256 MB RAM module is suitable for the 440BX or not, even by looking at the normal module details given on the site of the vendors. When I had bought my ASUS P3B-F motherboard, it was one of the best and most scalable motherboards I could afford and it has already been obsoleted and has become the primary bottleneck in my system. This is so sad. My PC is still immensely useful to me and performs most of the tasks that I throw at it quite well.

(Originally posted on Advogato.)

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