The roughly two and a half year tumultuous and ultimately failed relationship I have had with my Soyo K8USA will end permanently sometime this weekend, probably Sunday. I will place it in my yard, retrieve my new scoped 22, and lay waste to that infernal piece of Sh!t that has caused me nothing but problems ever since I got it!
I purchased a top of the line K8usa Ultra Black Label soon after it came out. This was the end of my freshmen year of college, and maybe not the best time to build a computer, but I wanted it bad and had the money and had waited long enough. I spared no expense- K8USA around 140$, AMD 64 3200+ $270 on ZipZoomFly, 2 SATA Maxtor 160gbs's $200 on ZipZoomFly, 1 stick 512mb Corsair VS ram- 65$ eBAY, Aspire X-Dreamer 2- 85$ ebay, Maxtor 250Gb IDE drive- 165$ Ebay, Dell 2001FP $800 Ebay, ATi Radeon 9800XT- $420, Creative Audigy 2 Platinum- $150, all told I spent around $2,400 (there were other things in there I forget about). Other than the RAM there wasnt much I could have gotten at the time that was better.
I then spent the better part of my 2 and some odd years fighting, cursing, loathing, and despising my machine. First the SATA drives went out, turns out they were prototype drives. Then my XT doesnt work for ****. I still dont know why, but it was a finicky MotherF**ker, with tonss of constant cooling issues, all the time getting VPU recover. When HL2 finally came out (which the card was made for, I got a free HL2 card, and it was a big reason I got it) I probably restarted no less than 40 times to get through the game. It froze and quit during UT2K4, COD, HL2, you name it. Then the sound card never really worked well, optical out was sketchy, and I couldnt get the front control bay to work well. Continuing problems with my graphics card, many threads on TF asking for help. Lord knows how many XP installs later. Just recently I reinstalled for kinda general maintenance and it was being stupid. The new install doesnt load for crap, takes forever. I bring it in, bad drive. Fine new Raptor 74gb 10K, what the ****. SATA drivers wont load, SATA wont recognize. Haggle with the guy, trade in my 9800pro, and 9800XT for a slightly used MSI 6800GT. My Soyo's SATA controller shot, 2 RAM slots bad, and who knows what else. New MSI Neo4, 939 3200 for my 754 3200, almost straight up. I got another stick of 512, I'm now running a 10K brand new Raptor, slightly used 6800Gt, new Neo4, new 3200+, 1gig of ram. Boot it up, what does it do, it F*ckin flickers, a lot. Like every few seconds the screen goes black and then back on again. This is just a story of my computer life. The best part of all this is that even though i thought I had warranties, they dont honor warranties through ebay, so even though its cheaper, dont go Ebay for computer components, becaause most of the time, youd be F'ed if they got messed up.
I dont really have a moral, I'm not having a pity party, Just a rant and a steam session as I stare at my monitor that says it doesnt see any keyboard, theres a checksum error, and my BIOS was just reset. I contemplate life, I'm past that fury stage when i honestly consider chuckin the works out of 12 story of Tamarack Hall. And the only thing stopping me is the fact that two things always worked, my CPU and my beautiful Monitor, never failed me. I feel bad when i think about putting my foot through the screen. I'm goin to bed.
Pointless thread, but I figured there are plenty of them on this forum anyhow, so no harm in adding my own story of trials of a first build, massive frustration, and its ultimate end, and hopefully not a beginning.
My Soyo and I, tales of a failed relationship 
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