Component return rates analysed

Our confrere Marc at BeHardware.com has analysed the return rates of the online store LDLC. And has come up with some stats on several categories of component.

The figures concern the parts sold between March and August 2008 and only models having been sold in quantities of 500 or more have been used.

Graphics cards (chips)	Graphics cards (brands)	Power supplys
- GeForce GTX 280 : 9.9% - GeForce GTX 260 : 4.3% - GeForce 9800 : 3.2% - GeForce 8800 : 3.3% - Radeon HD 4870 : 3.2% - Radeon HD 4850 : 1.9% - Radeon HD 3870 : 2.6%	- ASUSTeK : 2.0% - Sapphire : 2.0% - MSI : 2.1% - Leadtek : 2.4% - PNY : 2.8% - Gainward : 3.2% - Gigabyte : 3.6% - Point Of View : 5.6%	- Fortron : 1.4% - Enermax : 1.5% - Antec : 1.6% - Corsair: 1.8% - Seasonic : 1.9% - Cooler Master : 2.0% - Thermaltake : 2.8% - Hiper : 4.6%
Motherboards	Hard drives
- ASRock : 3.6% - MSI : 3.9% - Gigabyte : 4.4% - ASUSTeK : 4.7%	- Western : 1.2% - Hitachi : 1.4% - Seagate : 1.6% - Samsung : 2.8%

With motherboards you can see that the two major names in the field, ASUS and Gigabyte, have the worst scores. Above and beyond the overall rates, it is also clear that cards based on NVIDIA chipsets give the most trouble (ASUS P5N-T Deluxe at 23.6% for example).

For the power supplys, only two brands score really badly, Thermaltake and Hiper. Hiper scored a return rate of 4.6%, which is 3 x that of Fortron. In the samples analysed, the Antec TruePower Trio 550W got the worst score with 5.8% returns.

Next onto the hard drives. Here too, the results are quite close between the different protagonists, at least if you take Samsung out of the equation as it scores about twice as badly as the other makes. Note that the large capacity drives are those that give most problems and in this segment the most reliable is the 1 TB Seagate 7200.11 with a 2.4% return rate.

And last the graphics cards with two tables to analyse. First of all, it is clear that NVIDIA has the highest return rates, in particular its GeForce GTX 280 represent 10% of the total, ie one card in ten. ATI’s Radeon, although getting much hotter seems to be the most reliable.

When it comes to brands, there are the good, like ASUS, Sapphire or MSI (2%) and the less good, like Gigabyte and most of all, Point of View with a 5.6% return rate. It is also the case that cards without a fan are returned the most often, like the Gigabyte GV-RX26P5H, a Radeon HD 2600 passive (14.1%).

What the figures don’t tell us

Although the figures show general trends they should not however be taken as the ultimate benchmark. First of all, not all users return their defective equipment to their retailer, some prefering to go straight back to the manufacturer. This is particularly so for hard drives, for which some makes send a replacement disk within 3 days.

Also the figures are not specific as to the exact nature of the problem. The components having been returned for abuse/poor use by the end user need to be differentiated from those returned for a fault pure and simple. This would however seem impossible to put into place.

In any case, here we’re only talking about LDLC returns. There are differences with other large retailers who received other lots of products.

> Detailed analysis of motherboard return rates on BeHardware.com
> Detailed analysis of power supply return rates on BeHardware.com
> Detailed analysis of graphics card return rates on BeHardware.com
> Detailed analysis of hard drive return rates on BeHardware.com