- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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 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.
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.
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
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.
'Fraid ASRock isn’t good news either https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy5I2CnM_38
Well damn.
There’s Supermicro and Tyan, but they’re…a different market.
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.