Well, my experience says that the reason your RAM and power supplies are the first thing to fail is probably because you're buying cheap components.

G.M. has said the freedom those companies have to seek cheaper, often foreign-made, components, gives them an advantage.

Optical computing will also need small, cheap components that don't skimp on performance as well.

The use of cheap components was an important contributor to the unit's cost.

Some other devices provide the tilt sensing feature with a cheaper component, which is not a true accelerometer.

Investigators said this week's bombs, like the others, had been prepared from cheap components that could be acquired at any hardware store.

These MP3 players were probably built with the cheapest components available.

For these users performance, longevity and expansion capability take precedence to achieving the absolute lowest cost through the use of the cheapest possible components.

Depending on the problem, solving it with a cluster of cheaper components can be less expensive that investing in better hardware that costs more.

The user can, in many cases, purchase a lower performance, cheaper component and overclock it to the clock rate of a more expensive component.