Are PCI Diagnostics cards any good?

Never used one of those for such kind of situations.
I just look for things easy to spot, if I find nothing I just replace.

But looks cheap enough... buy it and make a review? =P

KrossX said:

Never used one of those for such kind of situations.
I just look for things easy to spot, if I find nothing I just replace.

But looks cheap enough... buy it and make a review? =P

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Unless someone makes a post telling me that it's worthless I probably will just end up buying it.

Usually I just look for easy things to spot too, but when it's not so obvious it can be a real pain in the ass, because from time to time you have an issue that could be the powersupply..... wait maybe the ram..... then again it could be the video card.... or perhaps that new soundcard.... And trial and error can take forever in some situations like this.

so waht does these cards do in actually....i mean how do they work kinda thing

Just by looking at the bullet points on the linked page, I'm guessing it checks your PC's vital components and if one of them isn't functioning properly, it generates a 2-digit error code (displayed on the LCD on the card), then the user only has to look up what that 2-digit error code means from the card's manual and replace the faulty component.

Sorry if it totally doesn't work like that, I'm just pulling stuff out of my @$$ here :heh:

yeah i thought about it that way.if it does work that way then its pretty neat i would say

Somehow I think this card won't be very usefull...afterall the second it for instance is in a system which a graphics card it does not know it would throw up an error...despite that mostly likely not being the problem at hand if there is another problem.....at least that's how I see things, don't know if it really is like that though.

The only thing that makes me think this is borked is the ridiculously low price......then again this isn't really doing any processing to need a powerful chip or memory or something.

gamefreak94 said:

Just by looking at the bullet points on the linked page, I'm guessing it checks your PC's vital components and if one of them isn't functioning properly, it generates a 2-digit error code (displayed on the LCD on the card), then the user only has to look up what that 2-digit error code means from the card's manual and replace the faulty component.

Sorry if it totally doesn't work like that, I'm just pulling stuff out of my @$$ here :heh:

Click to expand...

That's essentially how it works. Some motherboards had this built right in. That's exactly what this is. For the price, you probably can't go wrong, but how "good" it is is something I don't know. The only PC I had with any kind of diagnostic built in were the Dell PCs with their four light codes, which were helpful, but not perfect.

Computer guy I know uses a diagnostic card similar to this and he swears by it, purely from the time saving aspect. It wasn't perfect, but it generally threw him into the right direction of where to start troubleshooting. His one only cost about 3 cents off ebay however and was a fair bit nastier than that one, but they can be pretty helpful.

all diagnostic cards are handy, its a matter that if you can find a use and if it explains errors properly... the best i found is ones that displays 2 hexidecimal characters on the pci card itself (so it doesnt rely on the system to the error reportin) which can be reffered to the manual to know the problem...

its all a matter of opinion and researching what type of features they can provide and knowing what features you want and need and based upon that decide how much should you pay for one