I ordered a board from Asus last year. FedEx delivered it to the wrong place. Delivery picture was at some apartment somewhere. They gave me so much shit. I had to go to my bank to help me get my money back. Took over a month.
I’m old enough to remember when ASUS was viewed as one of the best hardware manufacturers you could go with.
It has been a long, slow decline for ASUS. They really manufactured their own demise here.
This is really sad.
My main machine is running a Asus motherboard. 12 years old and still games fine.
When was that? I don’t think I’ve ever viewed them as anything except junk and I had an asus laptop in 2007 or 8.
I remember them being quality in the 90’s and early 2000’s, but 2008 tracks for about when their products first began to take a downturn.
The problem with asus was all the engineers who cared went to asrock when they split. For those who don’t know, asrock started life as a subsidiary for asus to cover the low end and OEM markets. There used to be a lot of shared engineering between the two companies but there started to be some bad blood between each other as asus was releasing server hardware and asrock was releasing enthusiasts hardware. Ultimately it was decided since neither side wanted to stop stepping on the others toes they would let asrock fully separate from asus as a company and let the market decide things. Ironically that only lasted for three years before the majority stake in asrock was bought up by Pegatron, a company owned partially owned by asus…
So ASUS is now becoming as (un)reliable as ASRock.
Not in a place to watch the video, what’s the tl;dw?
The usual. Hardware quality slowly goes to shit, company starts getting tricksy with consumers to make money instead of making quality product.
The big one was the BIOS update that nearly fried a lot of 670 motherboards that ASUS turned around and tried to avoid taking responsibility for, trying to pin issues on the consumer.
It’s capitalists being capitalists. Completely ruining their brand to squeeze out a short term 1% increase in revenue.
We are in the “how many of my customers can I screw over and completey piss off and still make a profit” stage of capitalism.
Sending out defective boards, then refusing RMAs for said defective boards. They basically go “You voided the warranty by opening it, lul git fukd loser.”
Never mind the fact that (unless the board is visibly broken somehow) you’d need to open it and plug shit in to test it. So there would be no way to test it without voiding the warranty. It’s a catch-22 in action.
The truly shitty part is that using the board doesn’t void the warranty. But ASUS is claiming the people trying to RMA all have voided warranties. If it were only one or two, then yeah it may be scammers trying to avoid losing money after roasting a board. But it quickly turned into a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario, where nobody is believing ASUS anymore because they’re basically just blanket denying every single warranty RMA.
I’m guessing this for the US market? I had a completely different experience in Singapore and it was perfectly fine.
Puts out defective products then misleads consumers to think they have voided their warranty so they can’t get a replacement for said defective products.
There’s more too it but that’s the main thing that made people turn on them.
You’ve just described my entire experience with the Transformer tablet. After a year of sending it in within days of receiving it “repaired,” the day after my warranty ended, they said they discovered a faulty network chip and could replace it for the price of a new tablet plus shipping both ways.
I’ve been shouting “Fuck ASUS” for the past 10 years and I’m so glad I can now join others in it.
I had one of those. It worked well until I filled it up dor 90% ( photo backup while on holiday so I could keep taking pictures. ). It became laggy and slow. Even after doing a full reset.
At one point one of the keys in the keyboard got detached/broke. Was within the warranty period so i contacted them.
Sent the photos they asked. They still couldn’t determine the damage or if it was under warranty. So they wanted me to send it in free of charge. Then they would determine if it was under warranty.
If yes, they would repair it and return it for free If no, I would have to pay 50€ to get it back unfixed. Or more if I would ask them to fix it.
I never did it because I felt like they were just going to say “no warranty” for a quick and easy 50€…
Enshittification
Shit, if Asus is no good anymore, what brand is good nowadays?
Msi Lenovo I think
Lenovo is now garbage aside from their Enterprise model offerings. The consumer level stuff is just reduced to junk now.
MSI is still on the come up. Can’t think of a bad component they’ve released in many years.
ASRock is always rock solid.
Gigabyte seems to be making a comeback.
I liked ASrock when they were in the ECS tier of quirky and weird. Got a Socket 939 board with the ULi M1695 chipset that was really nifty.
Then I had an awful experience with an AM3 board that claimed to run a FX-8350, until they edited their support list.
I grudgingly chose them for AM5 because it was $50 cheaper for the featured I wanted, and it’s been okay, aside from me breaking the x16 slot clip due to hamfistedly removing a shipping-container sized GPU.
Glad you brought up ECS. Not good for high-end computing, but really stable for low-end. I have a customer with an Athlon64 box I built them in a pinch almost 20 years ago now that just runs a POS system, and it’s never caused him a single problem. Sometimes budget minded brands work in a pinch. ECS is not super well known, but always been great with customer service and advance RMA replacements. I wouldn’t call their hardware super sturdy in some cases though.
Thanks! This will be helpful next time I have to upgrade my PC
It’s funny, ASRock went from a company I’d never fucking heard of to one of the top names in the space. I used to be like “what’s this no-name brand?” and now I’m like “Oh ASRock, I know them.”
Unrelated, I miss the old Gigabyte Dual BIOS, where it had a backup BIOS in case the default got corrupted. Which mine did, a lot.
EDIT: NZXT? Wait, this NZXT? https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2021/NZXT-Recalls-H1-Computer-Cases-Due-to-Fire-Hazard I’d personally wait a while before jumping all in on them. Fire hazards in components is a pretty big fuckin deal.
I miss the old Gigabyte Dual BIOS, where it had a backup BIOS in case the default got corrupted.
This is on many higher end enthusiast/overclocking type motherboards, I’ve had it on multiple MSI and Gigabyte boards.
I have an MSI currently, and when I was searching I never encountered one with a dual-BIOS. I’ll keep an eye out in the future, thanks.
NZXT just started expanding on making components, and has really feature stuff. One to watch, though higher-end.
NZXT has always been some really mediocre stuff at ridiculous markup, I don’t have literally any faith in this statement
+1 for MSI. I’ve bought GPUs from them for 10+ years and never once had a failure or even a minor issue. Got a lot of mileage out of the GTX 1080 I bought in 2016.
Oof, my MSI 1080 died after allmost six years of service.
My first hardware death in 20 years of building my own systems, other than a drive.
Can’t blame them for it. It truly did its job, so I went with them again for my 3080.
Isn’t asrock asus
Not exactly. They were created out of Asus and are still related somehow, but I don’t know the details.
it was spun-off from asus in '02, then acquired by a different spin-off in '10 which asus retains significant ownership of. so, yea, basically asrock is their “discount” brand,
ASRock makes high end server parts that Asus has no equivalent.
Brb ima order 64gb ecc ram and an epyc to play minecraft
(/s obviously)
Nope.
I’ve been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.
I’m very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.
The rootkit is easy enough to turn off in the BIOS but I highly, highly recommend G-Helper instead of Armoury Crate.
Moving to it from AC is like leaving a prison cell full of screaming children and entering a calm beach.
Wtf?
What about MSI? Do they do this shit too?
I had an msi board in my father’s build, and as I was eyeing hardware upgrades I decided to get some more life out of it by adding some memory and updating the bios, as it was quite old. After the bios update, it never booted again. The upgrade tool said it was the correct file, that it was installed successfully, and that I just needed to reboot. Their flashback system? Didn’t work. Researching, it was apparently a KNOWN PROBLEM that msi just shrugged off, and several boards from that era would die after an update. No apology, no resolution, not even an admission of guilt. Because of that fuck up, proprietary software that my father used for business finances, wouldn’t activate on a new machine - the company shutdown the activation servers, and it required hardware checks, and there was no work around. The new program? Unable to read the old file format. We lost access to 20 years of tax/receipt records.
MSI is blacklisted for me, my family, friends, and anyone who I perform IT services for. I don’t give 2 fucks if the hardware is 80% cheaper and 200% better. Fuck you, they fucked perfectly good hardware, my reputation, and if we ever get audited we’re fucked. Eat shit and die, MSI.
I saw this headline and immediately thought “ArmouryCrate is the reason”
I certainly avoid ASUS stuff after discovering that piece of nonsense on my new install.
I didn’t even know that. Fuck.
This video kind of misses the mark on delivering the points of the title, but these are the simplest boiled down points of the community gripes:
- ASUS is having quality control issues, or deliberately skimping to pad profits
- They are rebranding lesser quality components with the higher quality ROG brand, and pricing it as such
- They are unilaterally voiding warranties when users try to RMA or return said hardware
Gigabyte (remember them?) did this same slow slide of enshittification about 10 years ago. The issue pretty much boils down to a company producing to many different types of things, instead of staying good at the things they do well, and the community has noticed and is calling for boycotts. This will no doubt put them on the defensive for years to come, and affect their overall standing in the larger community until they correct course.
They also reject advance RMAs. How nice to be without a system for weeks.
I have a 14 year old gigabyte motherboard in my older computer. When I first got it I didn’t know what I was doing and plugged the wrong thing in somewhere and blew up a component on it. As long as I don’t use that slot it chugs along just fine. I wish companies would just keep making things that last I’d gladly pay a fairly steep premium for that. Instead it seems every company that gets known for making good stuff decides to shit all over themselves
Honestly, in your case, it could just be more about who makes what components can withstand X amount of punishment and keep the electrons flowing through so other things keep working 😂
Agreed on your point though. Cheap shit needs to stop.
- They are rebranding lesser quality components with the higher quality ROG brand, and pricing it as such
Meaning you could sue them as fraudulent?
No. The ROG brand is ASUS’s brand in the first place.
Like, anyone could be like “this is my normal quiche, and this one here is my MuMu quiche.”
Then, once everybody’s buying MuMu, start using the normal recipe for MuMu. It’s not illegal, but at first people think they just got an Ok MuMu, then they start realizing it just sucks now. Hard for the company to recover from that.
But voiding and not honoring warranties?
Yeah.
That’s when you introduce the PuPu quiche that uses the original MuMu recipe and start the process all over.
Yeah. Companies like that are bridges I burn and never look back to.
Looks like big companies buying everything has unexpected downsides too (aside the known downsides).
Who ever saw this ever in history before now, or ever predicted it?
Take your crazy thoughts and wants for things to be good for consumers SOMEWHERE ELSE!
Gigabyte (remember them?)
Sure do! Both my board and the board in my wife’s computer are Gigabyte. So’s my video card. The only issue I’ve ever had with their stuff has been a bad stick of ram a few years ago, which they exchanged without argument.
Brands in this sphere I definitely have had trouble with: MSI, Razer – so many problems with Razer – and ASUS.
I’ve had problems with Logitech. They still make good peripherals, but it’s more luck of the draw for me recently, so QC may be getting cut.
I keep hearing this and wonder if I should buy bulk mice before they come preinstalled with malware or something because they last decades so voting with your wallet doesn’t really work.
Maybe. Or just switch to whatever the good mouse brand is at the time. I’m rocking a Microsoft Intellimouse Pro (wired) on my desktop, which I really like. On my work laptop, I have a Logitech MX Master 3 at work (had lots of issues with the thumb button in the past), and a Logitech Triathlon (no issues).
My wife had a couple of the g305s die on her within a year, so I switched her to a Razer Deathaddr Mini, which has been good for over a year now.
I’m still mourning the loss of the g5 moulds. Why do people feel the need to improve on perfection.
QC??? Hadn’t you heard that the end user is the new totally free Beta Tester? But don’t worry, they’ll solve the resulting support issues with AI.
People are trained to buy any old trash that is marketed to them without any critical thinking, it’s why everything is turning out broken like this.
I hate how true this is…
What are the problems with Razer? I’ve only used their mice, so I honestly don’t even know what else they make
I mean their mice are terrible too. I went through three of their mice in two years back in like 2016. Been using a Logitech g2 whatever their most famous one is since then and it’s not had a single problem. So much so that I bought two more for my other computer and my wife.
As someone with small hands, Razer is the only mouse I can use. All the beloved Logitech models are just too big. I’ve been using Razer mice for more than a decade. Only had a problem with one. I’d like some competition and alternatives, but the gaming market (side buttons) is for large hands. Which sucks, because people with large hands can also prefer that claw-grip and want smaller mice as well.
I’ve been using the same DeathAdder for like 10 years 😅 what are you doing to these poor mice
Keyboards, headphones, laptops, a handheld Steam Deck imitator, and various other RGB gamer shit. All of it is trash. Their business model nowadays seems to revolve entirely around upselling Aliexpress quality Chinese garbage at premium prices and then methodically denying every single warranty claim for defective and DOA product using spurious excuses. Oh, and their driver software is crap. And their products are consistently behind even Logitech on the features you get for the price.
Through no particular intentional means, I am now a Logitech convert. For mice and keyboards, their stuff has always been consistently reliable for me, their “G” series driver software is significantly less irritating than Razer Synapse, and most of their stuff is cheaper as well.
I think in my lifetime I’ve trashed four Razer keyboards, at least as many mice, and two pairs of headphones. All of these died early deaths – within weeks, sometimes a couple of months at the outside. Every time I tell myself this time will be different. It never is. I don’t buy their shit anymore, and I don’t recommend anyone else do, either.
I bought the $120 Razer Wolverine V2 Xbox controller after MS shrunk the official controller for the Series S/X and it was a piece of shit. Replaced it with a $45 gamesir (Chinese brand) with hall effect triggers and sticks that I’ve had for two years now with no issues and no drift, a first for any xbox controller I’ve ever had. Razer sucks.
I don’t remember Razer ever not being like that. Was it?
I dunno, the Boomslang was pretty rad back in the day. But it was so old it was a ball mouse.
Can just Onboard Memory Manager too for Logitech mice, don’t even need that G hub garbage.
Yeah so the thing with PC parts suppliers is that every brand is going to have people who have experienced problems with their stuff.
Gigabyte I’ve never had a problem with, but yeah during the pandemic their power supplies were fucking exploding so yeah that’s a problem.
Asus I’ve never had a problem with, but yeah their boards on both sides have been setting voltages and power limits very aggressively, killing AM5 CPUs catastrophically, potentially causing instability on higher end Intel chips as well it seems. That’s a problem.
Etc etc etc
I’m also running a Gigabyte high-end right now and I’ve got absolutely no complaints. I really enjoy the BIOS/UEFI menu.
Tried to RMA a motherboard with Gigabyte and they will find any excuse to void the warranty.
I’ve had good luck recently with Gigabyte. I know it’s circumstantial but my hope is that they are recovering.
They seem to be, but it’s been for a short time. Let’s see if they keep it going.
Anecdotal like the rest of the posts here, but I recently built a new rig for gaming/lab testing and used a Gigabyte board for the first time in a decade after seeing good reviews and a solid sale price.
About 3 weeks after setting everything up it just crapped out. Would reboot seconds after you pressed power. Checked and verified absolutely every other part, no luck. Tried to contact support, got the runaround for a few days until I was directed to a site to submit an RMA request.
That was a month ago, zero movement still. About 4 days into it I bought an identical part of Amazon and “traded” em. I’m usually pretty ethical about that kind of thing but this was ridiculous and I needed the PC working ASAP.
Who’s decent anymore? I always used to go with MSI.
At first I was watching to find out why people hate Asus now. But then I was watching to see how many times he changes the way he says Asus.
Come back EVGA, please.
For desktop motherboards I’ve usually gone MSI but my gaming laptop is an Asus and is a little over a year old. It’s worked perfect since I got it and I’ve had zero problems with it. The Nvidia GPU and laptop fans sure do sing when I’m playing games though
I got an Asus rog strix AMD board in 2019. Still working fine. Like everything I guess, YMMV.
The only issue I’ve had with it, even after a couple bios updates, is post takes forever. Like 20 seconds.
My Asus motherboard started bluescreening Windows. After a lot of effort I traced it down to a specific device ID that windows was loading firmware for. No matter what I tried I couldn’t get this auto installation to stop. It was a totally random component that added nothing I could tell.
Asus refused to release new firmware be cause the motherboard was “unsupported” even though the box etc has stickers saying it supports windows 10.
After a ton more effort I figured out how to make some low end api calls that eventually stopped this auto installation. It was mostly reliable. I got to crack a lot of jokes to my friends about my motherboard not supporting windows but it was a really hard period for me particularly because Linux gaming wasn’t as strong as it is today. I was really big into league of legends at the time and this experience forced me to quit, losing touch with many friends in the process.
At least it got you to stop playing League
They’ve been shit for quite a few years. Overheating laptops made me vocally against them after the fifth repair/replacement.
Years ago I happily used some Razer mice and keyboards, even a headset, so in the not too far past I told people around me that Razer was fairly good, quality wise, but alas, I think each and every one I recommended Razer products to had them break and or die well within warranty, and they always had to start a stupid discussion to get the warranty/RMA accepted, a few times even replacements denied outright by Razer.
For me this stands in sharp contrast with Logitech whom has never denied me a warranty, even for products a few weeks beyond the date, and they generally just send out a new item. That is, for me it is rare for a Logitech product to actually require replacement to begin with, I have a few mice, keyboards and headsets far older than 5 years and they work fine plus are still supported in the drivers.
Speaking of drivers, Razer at one point also made the decision to have their drivers require an account login to function properly (multi-button mice would only have 2 functional buttons if not logged in etc). But after some flak from its users it slightly changed that to the login being optional, but profiles would still be hampered without a continuous online presence.
Coming back to Asus, for a few years now I hear of people having quality issues and grumpy asus service desks, but for me their videocards ways ran fine (even without coil whine, unlike some MSI cards). I am quite hesitant to buy an Asus monitor or motherboard though.
I’ve had the opposite experience between Logitech and Razer, at least when it comes to mice. Every modern Logitech mouse I’ve had (3) has had the right and left click switches replaced as they started double clicking right after the warranty expired.
Logitech are actually using the wrong switches as they’re running them below their design voltage and is causing premature failure. I swapped them out with appropriately rated switches and they are still in service, now for much longer than the original switches.
When the failure started though I switched my main mouse to a Razer with optical switches and have had zero problems with the hardware. Software wise, Polychromatic + OpenRazer on Linux works better than Razer’s software on Windows. Razer’s software leaves a lot to be desired, but Logitech’s software is only marginally better.
Seconded for difficulty with Razer products. 15+ years ago they were pretty good. But since then I’ve had 2 headsets crap out right after warranty, one in warranty failed, mice quit working and a keyboard fail. They only replaced the one headset. Plus, their gaming software for their upper tier headsets is unbelievably bloated and awful. I’ve had to uninstall and reinstall it several times to get it working when some update f’s it up.
So far, my Logitech gear is still trucking along, even my cheap $14 travel mouse.
I finally bought a Razer mouse just a couple years ago since it was one of the few I could find that was a USB receiver + Bluetooth wireless gaming mouse I could use with my desktop and steam deck. Still works great, thankfully. But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Logitech product actually die on me; I just eventually replace them with a newer Logitech product.
But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year.
Seems to be a problem in general. I’ve been using Elecom trackballs for years, first one I bought still works. Ones I’ve bought in the last year all started wigging out on left click within a couple months. I took one apart recently to swap the mouse switch with a quick solder job and it’s good as new. Seems like the newer ones are using really cheap Chinese Omron switches that die quickly. IIRC the older one uses a Japanese Omron switch. The new one I soldered in is a Kailh GM2.0.
Modern Logitech mice are the same. The cheap Chinese Omron switches in the same mouse look like they’re from different factories.
I have two G604 mice that I bought within a couple of months of each other and one of them started double clicking. So I did a button switch just like you but with Kailh reds. Each mouse had old looking Omron switches.
This is troubling. I’ve been using ASUS motherboards for a very long time. I haven’t noticed any problems in the last 3 systems I built, but I also usually go for the workstation type motherboards instead of gaming motherboards, so I can use ECC RAM and dispense with the LED bling I don’t need or want. I wonder if they are still putting enough effort into the business/workstation stuff that it’s not having too many quality issues yet. I hope they can turn this around, because the list of quality PC parts manufacturers is growing smaller all the time.
I feel the same argument applies to many other brands already including lenovo and sadly the thinkpad lineup.
Some others are contributing to the same trend by increasing prices and while only relying on cult fandom.
I have a bone to pick with Lenovo, the backlight doesn’t work out of the box for my laptop in many Linux distributions because as far as I can tell they don’t honour the acpi calls to adjust it.
I have to do a whacky work around where I need the proprietary Nvidia driver to control it.
Dude has 35 subs, is this your own account?
Here we are, spam has finally arrived on the fediverse
I have a Asus motherbaord and no updates since 2021 time to get hacked by logoFAIL…
