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This undercover warranty investigation is a one-year follow-up from our series that investigated ASUS for motherboards incinerating AMD CPUs, at the end of which ASUS promised a number of improvements to its then-anti-consumer warranty processes. Spoiler alert: They’re still anti-consumer. We sent our ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme in for warranty repair for issues with the left joystick (“drift”). The device also had a broken microSD card. ASUS then pointed to the world’s tiniest scratch and tried to charge us $200 for it under threat of sending back a disassembled device if we didn’t pay within 5 days. It felt like extortion. If you’re wondering whether ASUS is worth buying, the answer for anyone who values support should be “no.”
We have now tested ASUS’ motherboard and ROG Ally warranty and RMA processes. Both have been anti-consumer experiences.
Are there any brands left that is consumer friendly to buy from these days??
Specifically motherboards or in general?
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Asrock motherboards. And they’re also about the only ones without some recent controversy (for AMD CPUs).In general, I can personally vouch for Noctua.
They sent me a free mounting kit for my then 7 year old CPU cooler when I switched it over to a new PC. I’ve had it for 12 years now.
Edit: Never mind, looks like also Asrock aren’t too great.
I don’t think anyone hates noctua. That’s like a free bingo square, or something
I worked with a guy that said “don’t tell me you used noctua fans on your 3d printer” I was like 😮. He really thought they were shit. He’s wrong.
For 3D printers, they’re subpar.
Noctua fans are typically 12v and tuned for lower speed for lower noise; in 3DP you’re generally looking for 24v fans* with the highest CFM:static pressure ratio you can get which will generally mean a louder, higher RPM fan.
They’ll work, but you can generally get industrial fans from Delta, Sunon, etc that are a better fit for the application, often for less money.
* - 5v and 12v fans are getting more common simply because they tend to be more available. Preference for high CFM:static pressure holds true regardless.
They’re not shit, but a lot of people don’t realize that a big reason they’re quieter is because they don’t spin as fast, therefore they’re moving less air. Noctua is typically trading cooling performance for less noise, which can also be achieved by throwing a resistor inline on a non-Noctua fan.
That being said, their motors are higher quality and, at least in my experience, tend to last longer than cheap fans.
I got burned by ASRock years ago, they are literally just Asus but with less quality control
Was it before AM4 by any chance?
It was between 2010-2016, myself and a few of my mates tried them on a few times over the years and they crapped out every time after a couple months. Swore off them for good after that.
The X370 Taichi was considered one of the best boards of the generation, so I’m pretty sure they improved.
Mine’s still going strong in a friend’s computer 7 years later, with a Ryzen 5600.
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I can tell you bad things about a crappy Asrock AM3 board I got a decade ago
Yeah, from what I’ve seen they weren’t great before and have switched things up in recent years.
But I haven’t had any personal experience with their boards.
From what I heard Asrock became a joke quality wise and got the shits about being the lowest quality mainstream manufacturer and did something about it.
Honestly, I’ve had nothing but good luck with Asrock. The few times I’ve needed at MB replacement (one was for a 2 year old board that had a known issue, Intels fault, not theirs) they just sent me a replacement board after I sent mine in.
Its probably been 5 years since I’ve had to use thier RMA process, but I’m still putting Asrock boards in everything I build. I build for pretty much all my friend and family circle (probably 3-8 builds a year) and I don’t know of any that have had an issue so far (they would for sure come back to me for help if they did).
Taichi is such a great enthuaist line and Steel Legend is a great mid range. I’ll always recommend them.
I don’t have much experience with Corsair, but when one of my fans on my AIO went janky, they sent me a label and then shipped me a newer model that looks brand new.
…it’s going in another machine, as my compy now has a D15
'Fraid ASRock isn’t good news either https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy5I2CnM_38
Well damn.
I don’t vouch for anybody at all but I enjoy my Gigabyte motherboard.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, there was an auto-update firmware vulnerability, a potential backdoor, a couple of years ago that affected most of the new models, but my Aero G x570 was not on the list.
There’s Supermicro and Tyan, but they’re…a different market.
I’ve had good experience with EVGA both times I’ve had problems with their hardware, this year most recently. MSI is supposedly OK too, but I never had to deal with their warranty.
Heard good about EVGA and Sapphire too. However my personal experience with MSI(laptops) have not been great. But shame about Asus as they so much more than EVGA and Sapphire as they only make Graphic Cards AFAIK.
Fair warning, don’t mess with the internals of the device because - as a Chinese company - their warranty is prohibitively anti-repair, but…
OneXPlayer. Specifically the OneXFly. More ergonomic than the steam deck, far more powerful than both it and the ROG Ally, has an SD Card slot that doesn’t fry itself like the Ally, and comes with a decent warranty for what is essentially the Chinese Lamborghini of GamerDecks. Again, don’t try to fix it yourself, it works well but if anything goes wrong (I had to wipe the SSD and didn’t know how to do so without removing it physically) then you’re screwed.
If you have big hands, just buy a Steam Deck OLED. It’s about as good as it gets for customer service to rely on Valve.
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Gigabyte Aorus maybe? Some years ago I sent in my MB that suddenly stopped working via the store I bought it from. No issues. Repaired and fully functional since.
I sent in another one after for a very weird issue. Long story short, I think something is slightly broken with the RAM slots but since it happens “only” sometimes (depends on how hardware is plugged in; and also randomly), they could not find any problem and sent it back as “OK”. So I am only partial disappointed. Process was without friction and charge.
The board that still currently drives my computer is asrock. Won’t buy them again because they put the cooling fan directly below the (hot) grapics card, made accessing m.2 real shitty and were missing a uefi feature I thought was standard (from gigagbyte; which graphics to use for init).
All my boards fall in the highend category, but not the absolute top. Also, I am in the EU.
Gigabyte has been selling motherboards with a backdoor vulnerability.
And during the GPU shortage a couple of years back they, together with newegg, sold GPUs only bundled with PSUs, but the PSUs were so bad quality that they literally blew up, and if you tried to RMA the PSU they refused unless you sent back the GPU as well.
Oh, yeah, the PSUs. Forgot about them since I wouldnt buy them. As long as they do not enshittyfy their mainboards…
As far as I remember it was partly windows fault too for loading this? I don’t have windows so I think i forgot about that too.
They did push new firmware about 10 days later to fix that vulnerability, and that portion was easily disabled until and after the patch. I remember that coning out as I’ve only had gigabyte boards for the last 12 years in 4 PCs and they’ve been great.